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BOSTON: 
TICKNOR    AND    FIELDS. 

JIDCCCLXI. 


RIVERSIDE     PRESS: 

PRINTED    BY    H.    O.    HOUGHTON, 

CAMBRIDGE. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   I. 

PAGE 

CONCERNING   THE    COUNTRY    PARSON'S    LIFE     ....         5 

CHAPTER  II. 

CONCERNING  THE  ART  OF  PUTTING  THINGS;  BEING 
THOUGHTS  ON  REPRESENTATION  AND  MISREPRE- 
SENTATION      23 

CHAPTER   III. 

CONCERNING  TWO  BLISTERS  OF  HUMANITY  ;  BEING 
THOUGHTS  ON  PETTY  MALIGNITY  AND  PETTY 
TRICKERY 63 

CHAPTER   IV. 
CONCERNING   WORK   AND   PLAY 101 

CHAPTER   V. 
CONCERNING   COUNTRY   HOUSES    AND    COUNTRY    LIFE  .    131 

CHAPTER    VI. 

CONCERNING   TIDINESS  ;     BEING     THOUGHTS     UPON    AN 

OVERLOOKED    SOURCE    OF    HUMAN    CONTENT     .      .      .    1G9 


COXTEXTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER   VII. 

HOW"  I  MUSED  IN  THE  RAILWAY  TRAIN;  BEING 
THOUGHTS  ON  RISING  BY  CANDLE-LIGHT  ;  ON  NER- 
VOUS   fears;   AND   ON   VAPOURING 202 

CHAPTER    VIII. 

CONCERNING  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES  OF  THE  DWELL- 
ING     233 

CHAPTER  IX. 
CON<  ERNING    HURRY   AND    LEISURE 265 

CHAPTER   X. 

CONCERNING     THE   WORRIES    OF     LIFE,    AND     HOW    TO 

MEET    THEM 307 

CHAPTER    XI. 
CONCERNING    GIVING   UP  AND   COMING  DOWN.      .      .      .   342 

CHAPTER   XII. 
CON<   ERNING     THE     DIGNITY   OF    DULNESS 378 

CHAPTER    XIII. 
CONCERNING   GROWING    OLD 406 


♦  - 


CONCLUSION 439 


CHAPTER  I. 
CONCERNING    THE    COUNTRY    PARSON'S    LIFE. 

HIS  is  Monday  morning.  It  is  a  beautiful 
sunshiny  morning  early  in  July.  I  am 
sitting  on  the  steps  that  lead  to  my  door, 
somewhat  tired  by  the  duty  of  yesterday, 
very  restful  and  thankful.  Before  me 
little  expanse  of  the  brightest  grass,  too 
little  to  be  called  a  lawn,  very  soft  and  mossy,  and  very 
carefully  mown.  It  is  shaded  by  three  noble  beeches, 
about  two  hundred  years  old.  The  sunshine  around  has 
a  green  tinge  from  the  reflection  of  the  leaves.  Double 
hedges,  thick  and  tall,  the  inner  one  of  gleaming  beech, 
shut  out  all  sight  of  a  country  lane  that  runs  hard  by :  a 
lane  into  which  this  gravelled  sweep  of  would-be  avenue 
enters,  after  winding  deftly  through  evergreens,  rich  and 
old,  so  as  to  make  the  utmost  of  its  little  length.  On  the 
side  furthest  from  the  lane,  the  miniature  lawn  opens  into 
a  garden  of  no  great  extent,  and  beyond  the  garden  you 
see  a  green  field  sloping  upwards  to  a  wood  which  bounds 
the  view.  One  half  of  the  front  of  the  house  is  covered 
to  the  roof  by  a  climbing  rose-tree,  so  rich  now  with  clus- 
ter roses  that  you  see  only  the  white  soft  masses  of  fra- 
grance.    Crimson  roses  and  fuchsias  cover  half-way  up 


6  CONCERNING   THE 

the  remainder  of  the  front  wall ;  and  the  sides  of  the 
flight  of  steps  are  green  with  large-leaved  ivy.  If  ever 
there  was  a  dwelling  embosomed  in  great  trees  and  ever- 
greens, it  is  here.  Everything  grows  beautifully  :  oaks, 
horse-chestnuts,  beeches;  laurels,  yews,  hollies;  lilacs 
and  hawthorn  trees.  Off  a  little  way  on  the  right,  grace- 
ful in  stem,  in  branches,  in  the  pale  bark,  in  the  light-green 
leaves,  I  see  my  especial  pet,  a  fair  acacia.  This  is  the 
true  country ;  not  the  poor  shadow  of  it  which  you  have 
near  great  and  smoky  towns.  That  sapphire  air  is  polluted 
by  no  factory  chimney.  Smoke  is  a  beauty  here,  there  is 
so  little  of  it :  rising  thin  and  blue  from  the  cottage ;  hos- 
pitable  and  friendly-looking  from  the  rare  mansion.  The 
town  is  five  miles  distant  :  there  is  not  even  a  village 
near.  Green  fields  are  all  about:  hawthorn  hedges  and 
rich  hedge-rows  :  great  masses  of  wood  everywhere. 
But  this  is  Scotland:  and  there  is  no  lack  of  hills  and 
rocks,  of  little  streams  and  waterfalls ;  and  two  hundred 
yards  off,  winding  round  that  churchyard  whose  white 
stones  you  see  by  glimpses  through  old  oak  branches,  a 
large  riser  glide-  swiftly  by. 

It  is  a  quiet  and  beautiful  scene:  and  it  pleases  me  to 
think  that  Britain  has  thousands  and  thousands  like  it. 
But  of  course  none,  in  my  mind,  equal  this:  for  tins  has 
been  my  home  for  live  years. 

I  have  been  sitting  here  for  an  hour,  with  a  book  on  my 
knee;  and  upon  that  a  piece  of  paper, whereon  I  have 
been  noting  down  some  thoughts  for  the  sermon  which  I 
hope  to  write  during  this  week,  and  to  preach  next  Sun- 
day in  that  little  parish-church  of  which  you  can  see  a 
corner  of  a  gable  through  the  oaks  which  surround  the 
churchyard.  1  have  not  hern  able  to  think  very  con- 
nectedly, indeed :  for  two  little  feet  have  been  pattering 


COUNTRY  PARSON'S  LITE.  7 

round  me,  two  little  hands  pulling  at  me  occasionally,  and 
a  little  voice  entreating  that  I  should   come  and   have  a 
race  upon  the  green.     Of  course  I  went :  for  like  most 
men  who  are  not  very  great  or  very  bad,  I  have  learned, 
for  the  sake  of  the  little  owner  of  the  hands  and  the  voice, 
to  love  every  little  child.     Several  times,  too,  I  have  been 
obliged  to  get  up  and  make  a  dash  at  a  very  small  weed 
which  I  discerned  just  appearing   through  the  gravel ; 
and  once  or  twice  my  man-servant  has  come  to  consult 
me  about  matters   connected  with  the   garden  and    the 
stable.     My  sermon  will  be  the  better  for  all  these  inter- 
ruptions.    I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  it  will  be  absolutely 
good,  though  it  will  be  as  good  as  I  can  make  it :  but  it 
will  be  better  for  the  races  with  my  little  girl,  and  for  the 
thoughts  about  my  horse,  than  it  would  have  been  if  I 
had  not  been  interrupted  at  all.     The   Roman  Catholic 
Church  meant  it  well :  but  it  was  far  mistaken  when  it 
thought  to  make   a  man   a  better   parish  priest   by  cut- 
ting him  off  from  domestic  ties,  and  quite  emancipating 
him  from  all  the  little  worries  of  domestic  life.      That 
might  be  the   way  to  get   men   who   would   preach    an 
unpractical  religion,  not  human  in  interest,  not  able  to 
comfort,  direct,  sustain   through  daily  cares,  temptations, 
and  sorrows.    But  for  preaching  which  will  come  home  to 
men's  business  and  bosoms ;  which  will  not   appear    to 
ignore  those  things  which  must  of  necessity  occupy  the 
greatest  part  of  an  ordinary  mortal's  thoughts  ;  commend 
me  to  the  preacher  who  has  learned  by  experience  what 
are  human  ties,  and  what  is  human  worry. 

It  is  a  characteristic  of  country  life,  that  living  in  the 
country  you  have  so  many  cares  outside.  In  town,  you 
have  nothing  to  think  of  (I  mean  in  the  way  of  little  ma- 
terial matters)  beyond  the  walls  of  your  dwelling.  It  is  not 


8  CONCERNING  THE 

your  business  to  see  to  the  paving  of  the  street  before 
your  door  ;  and  if  you  live  in  a  square,  you  are  not  indi- 
vidually responsible  for  the  tidiness  of  the  shrubbery  in 
its  centre.  When  you  come  home,  after  the  absence  of  a 
week  or  a  month,  you  have  nothing  to  look  round  upon 
and  see  that  it  is  right.  The  space  within  the  house's 
walls  is  not  a  man's  proper  province.  Your  library  table 
and  your  books  are  all  the  domain  which  comes  within  the 
scope  of  your  orderly  spirit.  But  if  you  live  in  the 
country,  in  a  house  of  your  own  with  even  a  few  acres 
of  land  attached  to  it,  you  have  a  host  of  things  to  think 
of  when  you  come  home  from  your  week's  or  month's 
absence :  you  have  an  endless  number  of  little  things 
worrying  you  to  take  a  turn  round  and  see  that  they  are 
all  as  they  should  be.  You  can  hardly  sit  down  and  rest 
for  their  tugging  at  you.  1^  the  grass  all  trimly  mown  ? 
Has  the  pruning  been  done  that  you  ordered  ?  Has  that 
rose-tree  been  trained?  Has  that  bit  of  fence  been 
mended  ?  Are  all  the  walks  perfectly  free  from  weeds  ? 
Is  there  not  a  gap  left  in  box-wood  edgings  ?  and  are 
the  edges  of  all  walks  through  grass  sharp  and  clearly 
defined?  lias  that  nettly  corner  of  a  field  been  made 
tidy?  lias  any  one  been  stealing  the  fruit?  Have  the 
Iibouring  cows  been  in  your  clover  ?  How  about  the 
stable?  —  any  fractures  of  the  harness?  —  any  scratches 
on  the  carriage?  —  anything  ami>s  with  the  horse  or 
horses?  All  these,  and  innumerable  questions  more, 
press  on  the  man  who  look-  after  matters  for  himself, 
when  he  arrives  at  home. 

Still,  there  i-  good  in  all  this.  That  which  in  a  dis- 
ponding  mood  you  call  a  worry,  in  a  cheerful  mood  you 
think  a  source  of  simple,  healthful  interest  in  life.  And 
there  is  one  case  in  particular,  in  which  I   doubt  not  the 


COUNTRY   PARSON'S   LIFE.  9 

reader  of  simple  and  natural  tastes  (and  such  may  all 
my  readers  be)  has  experienced,  if  he  be  a  country  parson 
not  too  rich  or  great,  the  benefit  of  these  gentle  counter- 
irritants.  It  is  when  you  come  home,  leaving  your  wife 
and  children  for  a  little  while  behind  you.  It  is  autumn: 
you  are  having  your  holiday  :  you  have  all  gone  to  the 
sea-side.  You  have  been  away  two  or  three  weeks ;  and 
you  begin  to  think  that  you  ought  to  let  your  parishioners 
see  that  you  have  not  forgotten  them.  You  resolve  to  go 
home  for  ten  days,  which  shall  include  two  Sundays  with 
their  duty.  You  have  to  travel  a  hundred  and  thirty 
miles.  So  on  a  Friday  morning  you  bid  your  little  cir- 
cle good-bye,  and  set  off  alone.  It  is  not,  perhaps,  an 
extreme  assumption  that  you  are  a  man  of  sound  sense 
and  feeling,  and  not  a  selfish,  conceited  humbug :  and, 
the  case  being  so,  you  are  not  ashamed  to  confess  that 
you  are  somewhat  saddened  by  even  that  short  parting ; 
and  that  various  thoughts  obtrude  themselves  of  possible 
accident  and  sorrow  before  you  meet  again.  It  is  only 
ten  days,  indeed  :  but  a  wise  man  is  recorded  to  have  once 
advised  his  fellow-men  in  words  which  run  as  follows, 
'  Boast  not  thyself  of  to-morrow,  for  thou  knowest  not 
what  a  day  may  bring  forth.'  And  as  you  sail  along  in 
the  steamer,  and  sweep  along  in  the  train,  you  are  thinking 
of  the  little  things  that  not  without  tears  bade  their  gov- 
ernor farewell.  It  was  early  morning  when  you  left : 
and  as  you  proceed  on  your  solitary  journey,  the  sun  as- 
cends to  noon,  and  declines  towards  evening.  You  have 
read  your  newspaper :  there  is  no  one  else  in  that  com- 
partment of  the  carriage :  and  hour  after  hour  you  grow 
more  and  more  dull  and  downhearted.  At  length,  as  the 
sunset  is  gilding  the  swept  harvest-fields,  you  reach  the 
quiet  little  railway  station  among  the  hills.     It  is  wonder- 


10  CONCERNING   THE 

fnl  to  see  it.  There  is  no  village  :  hardly  a  dwelling  in 
sight :  there  are  rocky  hills  all  round ;  great  trees  :  and 
a  fine  river,  by  following  which  the  astute  engineer  led 
his  railway  to  this  seemingly  inaccessible  spot.  You 
alight  on  that  primitive  platform,  with  several  large  trees 
growing  out  of  it,  and  with  a  waterfall  at  one  end  of  it : 
and  beyond  the  little  palisade,  you  see  your  trap  (let  me 
not  say  carriage),  your  man-servant,  your  horse,  perhaps 
your  pair.  How  kindly  and  pleasant  the  expression  even 
of  the  horse's  back  !  How  unlike  the  bustle  of  a  railway 
station  in  a  large  town  !  The  train  goes,  the  brass  of  the 
engine  red  in  the  sunset  ;  and  you  are  left  in  perfect 
stillness.  Your  baggage  is  stowed,  and  you  drive  away 
gently.  It  takes  some  piloting  to  get  down  the  steep 
slope  from  this  out-of-the-way  place.  What  a  change 
from  the  thunder  of  the  train  t < »  this  audible  quiet  !  You 
interrogate  your  servant  first  in  the  comprehensive 
question,  if  all  is  right.  Relieved  by  his  general  affirm- 
ative answer,  you  descend  into  particulars.  Any  one 
sick  in  the  parish  ?  how  was  the  church  attended  on  the 
Sundays  you  were  away  ?  how  is  Jenny,  who  had  the 
fever;  and  John,  who  had  the  paralytic  stroke?  How 
are  the  servants  ?  how  is  the  horse;  the  cow;  the  pig; 
the  dog?  How  is  the  garden  progressing?  how  about 
fruit  ;  how  about  flowers  ?  There  was  an  awful  thun- 
derstorm on  Wednesday:  the  people  thought  it  was  the 
end  of  the  world.  Two  bullocks  were  killed:  and 
thirteen  sheep.  Widow  ^Yiggins'  son  had  deserted  from 
the  army,  and  had  come  home.  The  harvest-home  at 
such  a  farm  i>  to-night:  may  Thomas  go?  What  a 
little  quiet  world  i-  the  country  parish:  what  a  micro- 
cosm even  the  country  parsonage!  You  are  interested 
and   pleased  :  JOU  are  getting  over  your  stupid  feeling  of 


COUNTRY  PARSON'S   LIFE.  11 

depression.  You  are  interested  in  all  these  little  mat- 
ters, not  because  you  have  grown  a  gossiping,  little- 
minded  man  ;  but  because  you  know  it  is  fit  and  right 
and  good  for  you  to  be  interested  in  such  things.  You 
have  five  or  six  miles  to  drive :  never  less :  the  scene 
grows  always  more  homely  and  familiar  as  you  draw 
nearer  home.  And  arrived  at  last,  what  a  deal  to  look 
at !  What  a  welcome  on  the  servants'  faces :  such  a 
contrast  to  the  indifferent  looks  of  servants  in  a  town. 
You  hasten  to  your  library-table  to  see  what  letters 
await  you :  country  folks  are  always  a  little  nervous 
about  their  letters,  as  half  expecting,  half  fearing,  half 
hoping,  some  vague,  great,  undefined  event.  You  see 
the  snug  fire  :  the  chamber  so  precisely  arranged,  and 
so  fresh-looking:  you  remark  it  and  value  it  fifty  times 
more  amid  country  fields  and  trees  than  you  would 
turning  out  of  the  manifest  life  and  civilization  of  the 
city  street.  You  are  growing  cheerful  and  thankful 
now  ;  but  before  it  grows  dark,  you  must  look  round  out 
of  doors :  and  that  makes  you  entirely  thankful  and 
cheerful.  Surely  the  place  has  grown  greener  and 
prettier  since  you  saw  it  last !  You  walk  about  the 
garden  and  the  shrubbery :  the  gravel  is  right,  the  grass 
is  right,  the  trees  are  right,  the  hedges  are  right,  every- 
thing is  right.  You  go  to  the  stable-yard :  you  pat  your 
horse,  and  pull  his  ears,  and  enjoy  seeing  his  snug 
resting-place  for  the  night.  You  peep  into  the  cow- 
house, now  growing  very  dark :  you  glance  into  the 
abode  of  the  pig :  the  dog  has  been  capering  about  you 
all  this  while.  You  are  not  too  great  a  man  to  take 
pleasure  in  these  little  things.  And  now  when  you 
enter  your  library  again,  where  your  solitary  meal  is 
spread,  you  sit  clown  in  the  mellow  lamplight,  and  feel 


12  CONCERNING   THE 

quite  happy.  How  different  it  would  have  been  to  have 
walked  out  of  a  street-cab  into  a  town-house,  with 
nothing  beyond   its    walls   to   think   of! 

This  is  so  sunshiny  a  day,  and  everything  is  looking 
so    cheerful    and    beautiful,    that    I   know    my    present 
testimony  to  the  happiness  of  the  country  parson's  life 
must  be  received   with   considerable    reservation.  ,  Just 
at    the   present   hour,   I    am    willing   to   declare  that   I 
think    the    life    of    a    country    clergyman,   in    a    pretty 
parish,  with  a  well-conducted  and  well-to-do  population, 
and  with  a  fair  living,  is  as  happy,  useful,  and  honour- 
able as  the  life  of  man  can  be.     Your  work  is  all  of  a 
pleasant  kind;    you   have,   generally   speaking,   not   too 
much  of  it ;  the  fault  is  your  own  if  you  do  not  meet 
much   esteem   and    regard  among   your   parishioners   of 
all  degrees  ;  you  feel  you  are  of  some  service  in  your 
feneration  :     you    have    intellectual    labours    and    tastes 
which  keep  your  mind  from  growing  rusty,  and  which 
admit   you   into   a  wide   field  of  pure  enjoyment :    you 
have  pleasant  country  cares   to  divert  your  mind  from 
'head-work,  and  to  keep  you  for  hours  daily  in  the  open 
air,  in  a  state  of  pleasurable  interest;   your  little  chil- 
dren  -row  up  with  green  fields   about  them  and  pure 
air  to   breathe:    and    if  your  heart  be   in  your   sacred 
work,  you  feel,  Sunday  by   Sunday  and   day  by  day.  a 
solid    enjoyment    in    telling    your    fellow-creatures    the 
Good  News  you  are  commissioned  to  address  to  them, 
which  it  is  hard   to  describe  to  another,  but  which  you 
humbly  and   thankfully   take   and  keep.      You   have   not, 
indeed,  the  excitement  and  the  exhilaration  of  command- 
ing   the    attention     of    a    large    educated    congregation: 
those    are    reserved   for    the   popular   clergyman    of    a 


COUNTRY   PARSON'S   LIFE.  13 

city  parish.  But  then,  you  are  free  from  the  tempta- 
tion to  attempt  the  unworthy  arts  of  the  clap-trap  mob- 
orator,  or  to  preach  mainly  to  display  your  own  talents 
and  eloquence  ;  you  have  striven  to  exclude  all  personal 
ambition  ;  and,  forgetting  yourself  or  what  people  may 
think  of  yourself,  to  preach  simply  for  the  good  of  your 
fellow-sinners,  and  for  the  glory  of  that  kind  Master 
whom  you  serve.  And  around  you  there  are  none 
of  those  heart-breaking  things  which  must  crush  the 
earnest  clergyman  in  a  large  town  :  no  destitution ; 
poverty,  indeed,  but  no  starvation  :  and,  although  evil 
will  be  wherever  man  is,  nothing  of  the  gross,  daring, 
shocking  vice,  which  is  matured  in  the  dens  of  the 
great  city.  The  cottage  children  breathe  a  confined 
atmosphere  while  within  the  cottage ;  but  they  have 
only  to  go  to  the  door,  and  the  pure  air  of  heaven  is 
about  them,  and  they  live  in  it  most  of  their  waking 
hours.  Very  different  with  the  pale  children  of  a  like 
class  in  the  city,  who  do  but  exchange  the  infected 
chamber  for  the  filthy  lane,  and  whose  eyes  are  hardly 
ever  gladdened  by  the  sight  of  a  green  field.  And  when 
the  diligent  country  parson  walks  or  drives  about  his 
parish,  not  without  a  decided  feeling  of  authority  and 
ownership,  he  knows  every  man,  woman,  and  child  he 
meets,  and  all  their  concerns  and  cares.  Still,  even  on 
this  charming  morning  I  do  not  forget,  that  it  depends 
a  good  deal  upon  the  parson's  present  mood,  what  sort 
of  account  he  may  give  of  his  country  parish  and  his 
parochial  life.  If  he  have  been  recently  cheated  by  a 
well-to-do  farmer  in  the  price  of  some  farm  produce ; 
if  he  have  seen  a  humble  neighbour  deliberately  forcing 
his  cow  through  a  weak  part  of  the  hedge  into  a  rich 
pasture-field   of   the   glebe,  and   then    have  found   him 


14  CONCERNING   THE 

ready  to  swear  that  the  cow  trespassed  entirely  without 
hi-  knowledge  or  will ;  if  he  meet  a  hulking  fellow 
carrying  in  the  twilight  various  rails  from  a  fence  to  be 
used  as  firewood  ;  if,  on  a  warm  summer  day,  the  whole 
congregation  falls  fast  asleep  dui'ing  the  sermon  ;  if  a 
fanner  tells  him  what  a  bad  and  dishonest  man  a  dis- 
charged man-servant  Avas,  some  weeks  after  the  parson 
had  found  that  out  for  himself  and  packed  off  the 
dWionest  man  ;  if  certain  of  the  cottagers  near  appear 
disposed  to  live  entirely,  instead  of  only  partially,  of  the 
par-onage  larder ;  the  poor  parson  may  sometimes  be 
found  ready  to  wish  himself  in  town,  compact  within  a 
hou.-e  in  a  street  with  no  back  door;  and  not  spreading 
out  such  a  surface  as  in  the  country  he  must,  for  petty 
fraud  and  peculation.  But.  after  all,  the  country  par- 
son's great  worldly  cross  lies  for  the  most  part  in  his 
poverty,  and  in  the  cares  which  arise  out  of  that.  It 
is  not  always  so,  indeed.  In  the  lot  of  some  the  happy 
medium  has  been  reached;  they  have  found  the  "neither 
poverty  nor  riches'  of  the  wise  man's  prayer.  "Would 
that  it  were  so  with  all  !  For  how  it  must  cripple  a 
clergyman's  usefulness,  how  abate  his  energies,  how 
destroy  his  eloquence,  how  sicken  his  heart,  how  narrow 
and  degrade  his  mind,  how  tempt  (as  it  has  sometimes 
done).  t<>  unfair  and  dishonest  shifts  and  expedients,  to 
go  about  not  knowing  how  to  make  the  ends  meet,  not 
seeing  how  to  pay  what  he  owe-  !  If  I  were  a  rich 
man.  how  it  would  gladden  me  to  -end  a  fifty-pound  note 
to  certain  houses  1  have  seen!  What  a  dead  weight  it 
would  lift  from  the  poor  wife's  heart!  Ah!  I  can  think 
of  the  country  parson,  like  poor  Sydney  Smith,  adding 
his  accounts,  calculating  Id-  little  means,  wondering 
where    lie   can    pinch    or   pare   any   closer,   till   the    poor 


COUNTRY  PARSON'S   LIFE.  15 

fellow  bends  down  his  stupified  head  and  throbbing 
temples  on  his  hands,  and  wishes  he  could  creep  into  a 
quiet  grave.  God  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn  lamb  ; 
or  I  should  wonder  how  it  does  not  drive  some  country 
parsons  mad,  to  think  what  would  become  of  their 
children  if  they  were  taken  away.  It  is  the  warm  nest 
upon  the  rotten  bough.  They  need  abundant  faith  ;  let 
us  trust  they  get  it.  But  in  a  desponding  mood,  I  can 
well  imagine  such  a  one  resolving  that  no  child  of  his 
shall  ever  enter  upon  a  course  in  life  which  has  brought 
himself  such  misery  as  he  has  known. 

I  have  been  writing  down  some  thoughts,  as  I  have 
said,  for  the  sermon  of  next  Sunday.  To-morrow 
morning  I  shall  begin  to  write  it  fully  out.  Some 
individuals,  I  am  aware,  have  maintained  that  listening 
to  a  sermon  is  irksome  work  ;  but  to  a  man  whose  tastes 
lie  in  that  way,  the  writing  of  sermons  is  most  pleasant 
occupation.  It  does  you  good.  Unless  you  are  a  mere 
false  pretender,  you  cannot  try  to  impress  any  truth 
forcibly  upon  the  hearts  of  others,  without  impressing  it 
forcibly  upon  your  own.  All  that  you  will  ever  make 
other  men  feel,  will  be  only  a  subdued  reflection  of  what 
you  yourself  have  felt.  And  sermon-writing  is  a  task 
that  is  divided  into  many  stages.  You  begin  afresh 
every  week  :  you  come  to  an  end  every  week.  If  you 
are  writing  a  book,  the  end  appears  very  far  away. 
If  you  find  that  although  you  do  your  best,  you  yet 
treat  some  part  of  your  subject  badly,  you  know  that  the 
bad  passage  remains  as  a  permanent  blot :  and  you 
work  on  under  the  cross-influence  of  that  recollection. 
But  if,  with  all  your  pains,  this  week's  sermon  is  poor, 
why,  you  hope  to  do  better  next  week.  You  seek  a 
fresh    field:    you    try    again.     No    doubt,   in    preaching 


16  CONCERNING  THE 

your  sermons  you  are  somewhat  annoyed  by  rustic 
boorishness  and  want  of  thought.  Various  bumpkins 
will  forget  to  close  the  door  behind  them  when  they 
enter  church  too  late,  as  they  not  unfrequently  do. 
Various  imn  with  great  hob-nailed  shoes,  entering  late, 
in-trad  of  quietly  slipping  into  a  pew  close  to  the  door, 
will  stamp  noisily  up  the  passage  to  the  further  extrem- 
ity of  the  church.  Various  faces  will  look  up  at  you 
week  by  week,  hopelessly  blank  of  all  interest  or  intelli- 
gence. Some  human  beings  will  not  merely  sleep,  but 
loudly  evince  that  they  are  sleeping.  Well,  you  gradually 
cease  to  be  worried  by  these  little  things.  At  first,  they 
jarred  through  every  nerve ;  but  you  grow  accustomed 
to  them.  And  if  you  be  a  man  of  principle  and  of  sense, 
you  know  better  than  to  fancy  that  amid  a  rustic  people 
your  powers  are  thrown  away.  Even  if  you  have  in 
past  days  been  able  to  interest  congregations  of  the 
refined  and  cultivated  class,  you  will  now  show  your 
talent  and  your  principle  at  once  by  accommodating  your 
instructions  to  the  comprehension  of  the  simple  souls 
committed  to  your  care.  I  confess  I  have  no  patience 
with  men  who  profess  to  preach  sermons  carelessly 
prepared,  because  they  have  an  uneducated  congrega- 
tion. Nowhere  is  more  careful  preparation  needed;  but 
of  course  it  must  lie  preparation  of  the  right  sort.  Let 
it  be  received  as  an  axiom,  that  the  very  iir-t  aim  of  the 
preacher  should  be  to  interest.  He  must  interest,  before 
he  can  hope  to  instruct  or  improve.  And  no  matter  how 
tilled  with  orthodox  doctrine  and  good  advice  ;\  Milium 
may  be:  if  it  put  the  congregation  to  sleep,  it  is  an 
abominably  had  sermon. 

Surely,  I  go  on  to  think,  this  kind  of  life   must   affect 
all  the  productions  of  the  mind  of  the  man  who  leads  it. 


COUNTRY  PARSON'S   LIFE.  17 

There  must  be  a  smack  of  the  country,  its  scenes  and  its 
cares,  about  them  all.  You  walk  in  shady  lanes :  you 
stand  and  look  at  the  rugged  bark  of  old  trees :  you  help 
to  prune  evergreens :  you  devise  flower-gardens  and 
winding  walks.  You  talk  to  pigs,  and  smooth  down  the 
legs  of  horses.  You  sit  on  mossy  walls,  and  saunter  by 
the  river  side,  and  through  woodland  paths.  You  grow 
familiar  with  the  internal  arrangements  of  poor  men's 
dwellings :  you  see  much  of  men  and  women  in  those 
solemn  seasons  when  all  pretences  are  laid  aside ;  and 
they  speak  with  confidence  to  you  of  their  little  cares 
and  fears,  for  this  world  and  the  other.  You  kneel 
down  and  pray  by  the  bedside  of  many  sick ;  and  you 
know  the  look  of  the  dying  face  well.  Young  children 
whom  you  have  humbly  sought  to  instruct  in  the  best  of 
knowledge,  have  passed  away  from  this  life  in  your 
presence,  telling  you  in  interrupted  sentences  whither 
they  trusted  they  were  going,  and  bidding  you  not  forget 
to  meet  them  there.  You  feel  the  touch  of  the  weak 
fingers  still ;  the  parting  request  is  not  forgotten.  You 
mark  the  spring  blossoms  come  back ;  and  you  walk 
among  the  harvest  sheaves  in  the  autumn  evening.  And 
when  you  ride  up  the  parish  on  your  duty,  you  feel  the 
influence  of  bare  and  lonely  tracts,  where,  ten  miles 
from  home,  you  sometimes  dismount  from  your  horse, 
and  sit  down  on  a  grey  stone  by  the  wayside,  and  look 
for  an  hour  at  the  heather  at  your  feet,  and  at  the  sweeps 
of  purple  moorland  far  away.  You  go  down  to  the  church- 
yard frequently :  you  sit  on  the  gravestone  of  your 
predecessor  who  died  two  hundred  years  since ;  and  you 
count  five,  six,  seven  spots  where  those  who  served  the 
cure  before  you  sleep.  Then,  leaning  your  head  upon 
your  hand,  you  look  thirty  years  into  the  future,   and 


18  CONCERNING  THE 

wonder  whether  you  are  to  grow  old.  You  read,  through 
moss-covered  letters,  how  a  former  incumbent  of  the 
parish  died  in  the  last  century,  aged  twenty-eight.  That 
afternoon,  coming  from  a  cottage  where  you  had  been 
seeing  a  frail  old  woman,  you  took  a  flying  leap  over  a 
brook  near,  with  precipitous  sides  ;  and  you  thought  that 
some  day,  if  you  lived,  you  would  have  to  creep  quietly 
round  by  a  smoother  way.  And  now  you  think  you  see 
an  aged  man,  tottering  and  grey,  feebly  walking  down  to 
the  churchyard  as  of  old,  and  seating  himself  hard  by 
where  you  sit.  The  garden  will  have  grown  weedy  and 
untidy :  it  will  not  be  the  trim,  precise  dwelling  which 
youthful  energy  and  hopefulness  keep  it  now. 

Let  it  be  hoped  that  the  old  man's  hat  is  not  seedy, 
nor  his  coat  threadbare :  it  makes  one's  heart  sore  to  see 
that.  And  let  it  be  hoped  that  he  is  not  alone.  But  you 
go  home,  I  think,  with  a  quieter  and  kindlier  heart. 

You  live  in  a  region,  mental  and  material,  that  is  very 
entirely  out  of  the  track  of  worldly  ambition.  You  do 
not  blame  it  in  others :  you  have  learnt  to  blame  few 
things  in  others  severely,  except  cruelty  and  falsehood : 
but  you  have  outgrown  it  for  yourself.  You  hear,  now 
and  then,  of  this  and  the  other  school  or  college  friend 
becoming  a  great  man.  One  is  an  Indian  hero :  one  is 
attorney-general :  one  is  a  cabinet  minister.  You  like 
to  see  their  names  in  the  newspapers.  You  remember 
how,  in  college  competitions  with  them,  you  did  not 
come  off  second-best.  You  are  struck  at  finding  that 
such  a  man,  whom  you  recollect  as  a  fearful  dunce, 
is  getting  respectably  on  through  life :  you  remember 
how  at  school  you  used  to  wonder  whether  the  difference 
between  the  clever  boy  and  the  booby  would  be  in  after 
days  the  same  great  gulf  that  it  was  then.     Your  life 


COUNTRY   PARSON'S   LIFE.  19 

goes  on  very  regularly,  each  week  much  like  the  last. 
And,  on  the  whole,  it  is  very  happy.  You  saunter  for 
a  little  in  the  open  air  after  breakfast :  you  do  so  when 
the  evergreens  are  beautiful  with  snow  as  well  as  when 
the  warm  sunshine  makes  the  grass  white  with  widely- 
opened  daisies.  Your  children  go  with  you  wherever 
you  go.  You  are  growing  subdued  and  sobered ;  but 
they  are  not :  and  when  one  sits  on  your  knee,  and  lays 
upon  your  shoulder  a  little  head  with  golden  ringlets, 
you  do  not  mind  very  much  though  your  own  hair  (what 
is  left  of  it)  is  getting  shot  with  grey.  You  sit  down  in 
your  quiet  study  to  your  work  :  what  thousands  of  pages 
you  have  written  at  that  table !  You  cease  your  task  at 
one  o'clock :  you  read  your  Times :  you  get  on  horse- 
back and  canter  up  the  parish  to  see  your  sick:  or  you 
take  the  ribbons  and  tool  into  the  county  town.  You 
feel  the  stir  of  even  its  quiet  existence :  you  drop  into 
the  bookseller's :  you  grumble  at  the  venerable  age  of 
the  Reviews  that  come  to  you  from  the  club.  Generally, 
you  cannot  be  bothered  with  calls  upon  your  tattling 
acquaintances :  you  leave  these  to  your  wife.  You 
drive  home  again,  through  the  shady  lanes,  away  into 
the  green  country :  your  man-servant  in  his  sober  livery 
tells  you  with  pride,  when  you  go  to  the  stable-yard  for 
a  few  minutes  before  dinner,  that  Mr.  Snooks,  the  great 
judge  of  horse-flesh,  had  declared  that  afternoon  in  the 
inn-stable  in  town,  that  he  had  not  seen  a  better-kept 
carriage  and  harness  anywhere,  and  that  your  plump 
steed  was  a  noble  creature.  It  is  well  when  a  servant  is 
proud  of  his  belongings :  he  will  be  a  happier  man,  and 
a  more  faithful  and  useful.  When  you  next  drive  out 
you  will  see  the  silver  blazing  in  the  sun  with  increased 
brightness.     And  now  you  have  the   pleasant  evening, 


20  CONCERNING  THE 

before  you.  You  never  fail  to  dress  for  dinner :  living 
so  quietly  as  you  do,  it  is  especially  needful,  if  you  would 
avoid  an  encroaching  rudeness,  to  pay  careful  attention 
to  the  little  refinements  of  life.  And  the  great  event  of 
the  day  over,  you  have  music,  books,  and  children :  you 
have  the  summer  saunter  in  the  twilight :  you  have  the 
winter  evening  fireside :  you  take  perhaps  another  turn 
at  your  sermon  for  an  hour  or  two.  The  day  has 
brought  its  work  and  its  recreation :  you  can  look  back 
each  evening  upon  something  done :  save  when  you  give 
yourself  a  holiday  which  you  feel  has  been  fairly  toiled 
for.  And  what  a  wonderful  amount  of  work,  such  as 
it  is,  you  may,  by  exertion  regular  but  not  excessive, 
turn  otf  in  the  course  of  the  ten  months  and  a-half  of  the 
working  year ! 

And  thus,  day  by  day,  and  month  by  month,  the  life 
of  the  country  parson  passes  quietly  away.  It  will  be 
briefiy  comprehended  on  his  tombstone,  in  the  assurance 
that  he  did  his  duty,  simply  and  faithfully,  through  so 
many  years.  It  is  somewhat  monotonous,  but  he  is  too 
busy  to  weary  of  it :  it  is  varied  by  not  much  society,  in 
the  sense  of  conversation  with  educated  men  with  whom 
the  clergyman  has  many  common  feelings.  But  it  is 
inexpressibly  pleasing  when,  either  to  his  own  house  or 
to  a  dwelling  near,  there  comes  a  visitor  with  whom  an 
entire  sympathy  is  felt,  though  probably  holding  very 
antagonistic  views:  then  come  the  'good  talks'  with 
delighted  Johnson:  genial  evenings,  and  long  walk-  of 
afternoons.  The  daily  post  is  a  daily  strong  sensation, 
sometimes  pleasing,  sometimes  painful,  as  he  brings 
tidings  of  the  outer  world.  You  have  your  daily 
Times:  each  Monday  morning  brings  your  Saturday 
li<riew:   and   the  Illustrated  London   Neivs  comes  not 


COUNTRY  PARSON'S  LIFE.  21 

merely  for  the  children's  sake.     You  read  all  the  Quar- 
terlies, of  course :    you   skim   the   monthlies :    but   it  is 
with  tenfold  interest  and  pleasure  that  month  by  month 
you  receive  that  magazine  which  is   edited  by  a  dear 
friend  who   sends    it  to  you,  and   in   which    sometimes 
certain  pages  have  the  familiar  look  of  a  friend's  face. 
You   draw   it   wet  from   its  big  envelope :    you   cut  its 
leaves  with  care :  you  enjoy  the  fragrance  of  its  steam 
as  it  dries  at  the  study  fire  :  you  glance  at  the  shining 
backs   of    that   long   row    of    volumes    into    which    the 
pleasant  monthly  visitants  have  accumulated :  you  think 
you  will  have  another  volume  soon.     Then  there  is  a 
great  delight  in  occasionally  receiving  a  large  bundle  of 
books  which  have  been  ordered  from  your  bookseller  in 
the  city  a  hundred  miles  off:  in  reading  the  address  in 
such  big  letters  that  they  must  have  been  made  with  a 
brush  :  in  stripping  off  the  successive  layers  of  immense- 
ly thick  brown  paper :  in  reaching  the  precious   hoard 
within,  all  such  fresh  copies  (who  are  they  that  buy  the 
copies  you  turn  over  in  the  shop,  but  which  you  would 
not  on  any  account  take  ?)  :  such  fresh  copies,  with  their 
bran-new  bindings  and  their  leaves  so  pure  in  a  material 
sense :  in  cutting  the  leaves  at  the  rate  of  two  or  three 
volumes  an  evening,  and  in  seeing  the  entire  accession 
of  literature  lying  about  the  other  table  (not  the  one  you 
write  on)  for  a  few  days  ere  they  are  given  to  the  shelves. 
You  are  not  in  the  least  ashamed  to  confess  that  you  are 
pleased  by  all  these  little  things.     You  regard  it  as  not 
necessarily   proving   any   special    pettiness  of  mind   or 
heart.     You  regard  it  as  no  proof  of  greatness  in  any 
man,  that  he  should  appear  to  care  nothing  for  anything. 
Your  private  belief  is  that  it  shows  him  to  be  either  a 
humbug  or  a  fool. 


22  THE  COUNTRY  PARSON'S  LIFE. 

In  this  little  volume  the  indulgent  reader  will  find 
certain  of  those  Essays  which  the  writer  discovered  on 
cutting  the  leaves  of  the  magazine  which  comes  to  him 
on  the  last  day  of  every  month.  They  were  written,  as 
something  which  might  afford  variety  of  work,  which 
often  proves  the  most  restful  of  all  recreation.  They  are 
nothing  more  than  that  which  they  are  called,  a  country 
clergyman's  Recreations.  My  solid  work,  and  my  first 
thoughts,  are  given  to  that  which  is  the  business  and  the 
happiness  of  my  life.  But  these  Essays  have  led  me  into 
a  field  which  to  myself  was  fresh  and  pleasant.  And  I 
have  always  returned  from  them,  with  increased  interest, 
to  graver  themes  and  trains  of  thought.  I  have  not 
forgot,  as  I  wrote  them,  a  certain  time,  when  my  little 
children  must  go  away  from  their  early  home :  when 
these  evergreens  I  have  planted  and  these  walks  I  have 
made  shall  pass  to  my  successor  (may  he  be  a  better 
man  !) ;  and  when  I  shall  perhaps  find  my  resting-place 
under  those  ancient  oaks.  Nor  have  I  wholly  failed  to 
remember  a  coming  day,  when  bishops  and  archbishops 
shall  be  called  to  render  an  account  of  the  fashion  in 
which  they  exercised  their  solemn  and  dignified  trusts ; 
and  when  I,  who  am  no  more  than  the  minister  of  a 
Scotch  country  parish,  must  answer  for  the  diligence 
with  which   I  served   my  little   cure. 


CHAPTER   II. 
CONCERNING   THE   ART  OF   PUTTING   THINGS 

BEING    THOUGHTS    ON    REPRESENTATION    AND 
MISREPRESENTATION. 


ET   the  reader  be   assured  that   the    word 
(r  ^jygyp))    Representation,   which  has   caught  his  eye 
-  £-\    on   glancing  at  the  title  of  this  essay,  has 
^afipS'C^    nothing   earthly    to    do   with   the   Elective 


Franchise,  whether  in  boroughs  or  counties.  Not  a 
syllable  will  be  found  upon  the  following  pages  bearing 
directly  or  indirectly  upon  any  New  Reform  Bill.  I  do 
not  care  a  rush  who  is  member  for  this  county.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  all  members  of  Parliament  are  very  much 
alike.  Everybody  knows  that  each  individual  legislator 
who  pushes  his  way  into  the  House,  is  actuated  solely 
by  a  pure  patriotic  love  for  his  country.  No  briefless 
barrister  ever  got  into  Parliament  in  the  hope  of  getting 
a  place  of  twelve  hundred  a  year.  No  barrister  in  fair 
practice  ever  did  so  in  the  hope  of  getting  a  silk  gown, 
or  the  Solicitor-Generalship,  or  a  seat  on  the  bench. 
No  merchant  or  country-gentleman .  ever  did  so  in  the 
hope  of  gaining  a  little  accession  of  dignity  and  influence 
in  the  town  or  county  in  which  he  lives.  All  these 
things  are  universally  understood;  and  they  are  men- 
tioned here  merely  to  enable  it  to  be  said,  that  this 
treatise  has   nothing;  to   do   with   them. 


24  CONCERNING  THE 

Edgar  Allan  Poe,  the  miserable  genius  who  died  in 
America  a  few  years  ago,  declared  that  he  never  had  the 
least  difficulty  in  tracing  the  logical  steps  by  which  he 
chose  any  subject  on  which  he  had  ever  written,  and 
matured  his  plan  for  treating  it.  And  some  readers 
may  remember  a  curious  essay,  contained  in  his  collected 
works,  in  which  he  gives  a  minute  account  of  the  genesis 
of  his  extraordinary  poem,  The  Raven.  But  Poe  was  a 
humbug;  and  it  is  impossible  to  place  the  least  faith  in 
anything  said  by  him  upon  any  subject  whatever.  In 
his  writings  we  find  him  repeatedly  avowing  that  he 
would  assert  any  falsehood,  provided  it  were  likely  to 
excite  interest  and  '  create  a  sensation.'  I  believe  that 
most  authors  could  tell  us  that  very  frequently  the  con- 
ception and  the  treatment  of  their  subject  have  darted  on 
them  all  at  once,  they  could  not  tell  how.  Many  clergy- 
men know  how  strangely  texts  and  topics  of  discourse 
have  been  suggested  to  them,  while  it  was  impossible  to 
trace  any  link  of  association  with  what  had  occupied 
their  minds  the  instant  before.  The  late  Doualas 
Jerrold  relates  how  he  first  conceived  the  idea  of  one  of 
his  most  popular  productions.  Walking  on  a  winter  day, 
he  passed  a  large  enclosure  full  of  romping  boys  at  play. 
He  paused  for  a  minute  ;  and  as  he  looked  and  mused,  a 
thought  flashed  upon  him.  It  wa-  not  so  beautiful,  and 
you  would  say  not  so  natural,  as  the  reflections  of  Gray, 
as  he  looked  from  a  distance  at  Eton  College.  As 
Jerrold  gazed  at  the  schoolboys,  and  listened  to  their 
merry  shouts,  there  burst  upon  him  the  conception  of 
Mrs.  Caudle's  Curtain  Lectures!  There  seems  little 
enough  connexion  with  what  he  was  looking  at  ;  and 
although  Jerrold  declared  that  the  sight  suggested  the 
idea,  he  could  not  pretend  to  trace  the  link  of  association. 


ART  OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  25 

It  would  be  very  intei-esting  if  we  could  accurately  know 
the  process  by  which  authors,  small  or  great,  piece 
together  their  grander  characters.  How  did  Milton  pile 
up  his  Satan ;  how  did  Shakspeare  put  together  Hamlet 
or  Lady  Macbeth ;  how  did  Charlotte  Bronte  imagine 
Rochester  ?  Writers  generally  keep  their  secrets,  and 
do  not  let  us  see  behind  the  scenes.  We  can  trace, 
indeed,  in  successive  pieces  by  Sheridan,  the  step-by-step 
development  of  his  most  brilliant  jests,  and  of  his  most 
gushing  bursts  of  the  feeling  of  the  moment.  No  doubt 
Lord  Brougham  had  tried  the  woolsack,  to  see  how  it 
would  do,  before  he  fell  on  his  knees  upon  it  (on  the 
impulse  of  the  instant),  at  the  end  of  his  great  speech 
on  the  Reform  Bill.  But  of  course  Lord  Brougham 
would  not  tell  us  ;  and  Sheridan  did  not  intend  us  to  know. 
Even  Mr.  Dickens,  when,  in  his  preface  to  the  cheap 
edition  of  Pickwick,  he  avows  his  purpose  of  telling  us 
all  about  the  origin  of  that  amazingly  successful  serial, 
gives  us  no  inkling  of  the  process  by  which  he  produced 
the  character  which  we  all  know  so  well.  He  tells  us  a 
great  deal  about  the  mere  details  of  the  work :  the  pages 
of  letter-press,  the  number  of  illustrations,  the  price  and 
times  of  publication.  But  the  process  of  actual  author- 
ship remains  a  mystery.  The  great  painters  would  not 
tell  where  they  got  their  colours.  The  effort  which 
gives  a  new  character  to  the  acquaintance  of  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  Englishmen,  shall  be  concealed  beneath 
a  decorous  veil.  All  that  Mr.  Dickens  tells  us  is  this : 
'  I  thought  of  Mr.  Pickwick,  and  wrote  the  first  number. 
And  to  the  natural  question  of  curiosity,  '  How  on  earth 
did  you  think  of  Mr.  Pickwick  ? '  the  author's  silence 
replies,  'I  don't  choose  to  tell  you  that!' 

And  now,  courteous  reader,  you  are  humbly  asked  to 


26  CONCERNING  THE 

suffer  the  writer's  discursive  fashion,  as  he  records  how 
the  idea  of  the  present  discourse,  treatise,  dissertation,  or 
essay  flashed  upon  his  mind.  Yesterday  was  a  most 
beautiful  frosty  day.  The  air  was  indescribably  exhil- 
arating: the  cold  was  no  more  than  bracing;  and  as  I 
fared  forth  for  a  walk  of  some  miles,  I  saw  the  tower  of 
the  ancient  church,  green  with  centuries  of  ivy,  looking 
through  the  trees  which  surround  it,  the  green  ivy 
silvered  over  with  hoar-frost.  The  hedges  on  either 
hand,  powdered  with  rime,  were  shining  in  the  cold 
sunshine  of  the  winter  afternoon.  First,  I  passed 
through  a  thick  pinewood,  bordering  the  road  on  both 
sides.  The  stems  of  the  fir-trees  had  that  warm,  rich 
colour  which  is  always  pleasant  to  look  at;  and  the  green 
branches  were  just  touched  with  frost.  One  undervalues 
the  evergreens  in  summer :  their  colour  is  dull  when 
compared  with  the  fresher  and  brighter  green  of  the 
deciduous  trees ;  but  now,  when  these  gay  transients 
have  changed  to  shivering  skeletons,  the  hearty  firs, 
hollies,  and  yews  warm  and  cheer  the  wintry  landscape. 
Not  the  wintry,  I  should  say,  but  the  winter  land- 
scape, which  conveys  quite  a  different  impression.  The 
wind  wintry  wakens  associations  of  bleakness,  bareness, 
and  bitterness ;  a  hearty  evergreen  tree  never  looks 
wintry,  nor  does  a  landscape  to  which  such  trees  give 
the  tone.  Then  emerging  from  the  wood,  I  Avas  in  an 
open  country.  A  great  hill  rises  just  ahead,  which  the 
road  will  skirt  by  and  bye:  on  the  right,  at  the  foot  of  a 
little  cliff  hard  liv,  runs  a  shallow,  broad,  rapid  river. 
Looking  across  the  river.  I  see  a  large  range  of  nearly 
level  park,  which  at  a  mile's  distance  rises  into  upland; 
the  park  -hows  broad  green  glades,  broken  and  bounded 
by  line  trees,  in  clumps  and  in  avenues.     In   summer- 


ART  OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  27 

time  you  would  see  only  the  green  leaves:  but  now, 
peering  through  the  branches,  you  can  make  out  the 
outline  of  the  grey  turrets  of  the  baronial  dwelling 
which  has  stood  there,  added  to,  taken  from,  patched,  and 
altered,  but  still  the  same  dwelling,  for  the  last  four 
hundred  years.  And  on  the  left,  I  am  just  passing  the 
rustic  gateway  through  which  you  approach  that  quaint 
cottage  on  the  knoll  two  hundred  yards  off — one  story 
high,  with  deep  thatch,  steep  gables,  overhanging  eaves, 
and  verandah  of  rough  oak  —  a  sweet  little  place,  where 
Izaak  Walton  might  successfully  have  carried  out  the 
spirit  of  his  favourite  text,  and  '  studied  to  be  quiet.' 
All  this  way,  three  miles  and  more,  I  did  not  meet  a 
human  being.  There  was  not  a  breath  of  air  through 
the  spines  of  the  firs,  and  not  a  sound  except  the  ripple 
of  the  river.  I  leant  upon  a  gate,  and  looked  into  a 
field.  Something  was  grazing  in  the  field  ;  but  I  cannot 
remember  whether  it  was  cows,  sheep,  oxen,  elephants, 
or  camels ;  for  as  I  was  looking,  and  thinking  how  I 
should  begin  a  sermon  on  a  certain  subject  much  thought 
upon  for  the  last  fortnight,  my  mind  resolutely  turned 
away  from  it,  and  said,  as  plainly  as  mind  could 
express  it,  For  several  days  to  come  I  shall  produce 
material  upon  no  subject  but  one,  —  and  that  shall  be  the 
comprehensive,  practical,  suggestive,  and  most  important 
subject  of  the  Art  of  Putting  Things  ! 

And  indeed  there  is  hardly  a  larger  subject,  in  relation 
to  the  social  life  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  England  ; 
and  there  is  hardly  a  practical  problem  to  the  solution  of 
which  so  great  an  amount  of  ingenuity  and  industry, 
honest  and  dishonest,  is  daily  brought,  as  the  grand 
problem  of  setting  forth  yourself,  your  goods,  your 
horses,  your  case,  your  plans,  your  thoughts  and  argu- 
ments —  all    your    belongings,  in    short  —  to    the    best 


28  CONCERNING  THE 

advantage.  From  the  Prime  Minister,  who  exerts  all 
his  wonderful  skill  and  eloquence  to  put  his  policy  before 
Parliament  and  the  country  in  the  most  favourable  light, 
and  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  who  does  his  very 
best  to  cast  a  rosy  hue  even  upon  an  income-tax,  down 
to  the  shopman  who  arranges  his  draperies  in  the  window 
against  market-day  in  that  fashion  which  he  thinks  will 
prove  most  fascinating  to  the  maid-servant  with  her 
newly-paid  wages  in  her  pocket,  and  the  nurse  who  in  a 
most  lively  and  jovial  manner  assures  a  young  lady  of 
three  years  old  that  she  will  never  feel  the  taste  of  her 
castor-oil,  —  yea,  even  to  the  dentist  who  with  a  joke 
and  a  smiling  face  approaches  you  with  his  forceps  in  his 
hand :  —  from  the  great  Attorney-General  seeking  to 
place  his  view  of  his  case  with  convincing  force  before 
a  bewildered  jury  (that  view  being  flatly  opposed  to 
common  sense),  down  to  the  schoolboy  found  out  in  some 
mischievous  trick  and  trying  to  throw  the  blame  upon 
somebody  else :  almost  all  civilized  beings  in  Great 
Britain  are  from  morning  to  night  labouring  hard  to  put 
things  in  general  or  something  in  particular  in  the  way 
that  they  think  will  lead  to  the  result  which  best  suits 
their  views;  —  are,  in  short,  practising  the  art  of  repre- 
senting or  misrepresenting  things  for  their  own  advantage. 
Great  skill,  you  would  say,  must  result  from  this  con- 
stant practice:  and  indeed  it  probably  does.  But  then, 
people  are  so  much  in  the  habit  of  trying  to  put  things 
themselves,  that  they  are  uncommonly  sharp  at  seeing 
through  the  devices  of  others.  '  Set  a  thief  to  catch  a 
thief,'  says  the  ancient  adage:  and  so,  set  a  man  who  can 
himself  tell  a  very  plausible  story  without  saying  any- 
thing positively  untrue,  to  discover  the  real  truth  under 
the  rainbow  tints  of  the  plausible  story  told  by  another. 
But  do  not  fancy,  my  kind  l'eader,  that  I  have  any 


ART   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  29 

purpose  of  making  a  misanthropical  onslaught  upon  poor 
humanity.     I  am  very  far  from  desiring  to  imply  that 
there  is  anything  essentially  wrong  or  dishonest  in  trying 
to  put  things  in  the  most  favourable  light  for  our  views 
and  plans.     The  contrary  is  the  case.     It  is  a  noble  gift, 
when  a  man  is  able  to  put  great  truths  or  momentous 
facts   before   our  minds  with    that   vividness    and    force 
which  shall  make  us  feel  these  facts  and  truths  in  their 
grand  reality.     A  great  evil,  to  which  human  beings  are 
by  their  make  subject,  is,  that  they  can  talk  of  things, 
know  things,  and  understand  things,  without  feeling  them 
in  their  true  importance  —  without,  in  short,  realizing 
them.     There  appears  to  be  a  certain  numbness  about 
the  mental  organs  of  perception ;  and  the  man  who  is 
able  to  put  things  so  strikingly,  clearly,  pithily,  forcibly, 
glaringly,  whether  these  things  are  religious,  social,  or 
political  truths,  as  to  get  through  that  numbness,  that 
crust  of  insensibility,  to  the  quick  of  the  mind  and  heart, 
must  be  a  great  man,  an  earnest  man,  an  honest  man,  a 
good  man.     I  believe  that  any  great  reformer  will  find 
less  practical  discouragement   in   the   opposition  of  bad 
people  than  in  the  inertia  of  good  people.     You  cannot 
get  them  to  feel  that  the  need  and  the  danger  are  so 
imminent  and  urgent ;  you   cannot  get  them   to  bestir 
themselves  with  the  activity  and  energy  which  the  case  de- 
mands.    You  cannot  get  them  to  take  it  in  that  the  open 
sewer  and  the  airless  home  of  the  working  man  are  such  a 
very  serious  matter ;  you  cannot  get  them  to  feel  that  the 
vast  uneducated  masses  of  the  British  population  form  a 
mine  beneath  our  feet  which  may  explode  any  day,  with 
God  knows  what  devastation.    I  think  that  not  all  the  won- 
derful eloquence,  freshness,  and  pith  of  Mr.  Kingsley  form 
a  talent  so  valuable  as  his  power  of  compelling  people  to 


30  CONCERNING  THE 

feel  what  they  had  always  known  and  talked  about,  but 
never  felt.  And  wherein  lies  that  power,  but  just  in  his 
skill  toput  things  —  in  his  power  of  truthful  representation? 
Sydney  Smith  was  once  talking  with  an  Irish  Roman 
Catholic  priest  about  the  proposal  to  endow  the  Romish 
Church  in  Ireland.  '  We  would  not  take  the  Saxon 
money,'  said  the  worthy  priest,  quite  sincerely ;  '  we 
would  not  defile  our  fingers  with  it.  No  matter  whether 
Parliament  offered  us  endowments  or  not,  we  would  not 
receive  them.'  'Suppose,'  replied  Sydney  Smith,  'you 
were  to  receive  an  official  letter  that  on  calling  at  such  a 
bank  in  the  town  three  miles  oft",  you  would  hereafter 
receive  a  hundred  pounds  a  quarter,  the  first  quarter's 
allowance  payable  in  advance  on  the  next  day ;  and 
suppose  that  \ou  wanted  money  to  do  good,  or  to  buy 
books,  or  anything  else :  do  you  mean  to  say  you  would 
not  drive  over  to  the  town  and  take  the  hundred  pounds 
out  of  the  bank  ? '  The  priest  was  staggered.  He  had 
never  looked  at  the  thing  in  that  precise  light.  He 
had  never  had  the  vague  distant  question  of  endowment 
brought  so  home  to  him.  He  had  been  quite  sincere  in 
his  spirited  repudiation  of  Saxon  coin,  as  recorded  above; 
but  he  had  not  exactly  understood  what  he  was  saying 
and  doing.  lOh,  Mr.  Smith,'  he  replied,  '  you  have  such 
a  way  of  putting  things!'  What  a  triumph  of  the 
Anglican's  art  of  truthful  representation  ! 

One  of  the  latest  instances  of  skill  in  putting  things 
which  I  remember  to  have  struck  me  I  came  upon, 
where  abundance  of  such  skill  may  be  found  —  in  a 
leading  article  in  the  Times.  The  writer  of  that  article 
was  endeavouring  to  show  that  tin;  work  of  the  country 
clergy  is  extremely  light.  Of  course  he  is  sadly  mis- 
taken ;  but  this  by  the  way.     As  to  sermons,  said  the 


AET   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  31 

lively  writer  (I  don't  pretend  to  give  his  exact  words), 
what  work  is  there  in  a  sermon?  Just  fancy  that  you 
are  writing  half  a  dozen  letters  of  four  pages  each,  and 
crossed !  The  thing  was  cleverly  put ;  and  it  really 
came  on  me  with  the  force  of  a  fact,  a  new  and  surprising 
fact.  Many  sermons  has  this  thin  right  hand  written ; 
but  my  impression  of  a  sermon,  drawn  from  some  years' 
experience,  is  of  a  composition  very  different  from  a 
letter  —  something  demanding  that  brain  and  heart 
should  be  worked  to  the  top  of  their  bent  for  more  hours 
than  need  be  mentioned  here;  something  implying  as 
hard  and  as  exhausting  labour  as  man  can  well  go  through. 
Surely,  I  thought,  I  have  been  working  under  a  sad 
delusion  !  Only  half  a  dozen  light  letters  of  gossip  to  a 
friend :  that  is  the  amount  of  work  implied  in  a  sermon ! 
Have  I  been  all  these  years  making  a  bugbear  of  such  a 
simple  and  easy  matter  as  that?  Here  is  a  new  and 
cheerful  way  of  putting  the  thing!  But  unhappily, 
though  the  clever  representation  would  no  doubt  convey 
to  some  thousands  of  readers  the  impression  that  to  write 
a  sermon  was  a  very  simple  affair  after  all,  it  broke 
down,  it  crumpled  up,  it  went  to  pieces  when  brought  to 
the  test  of  fact.  When  next  morning  I  had  written  my 
text,  I  thought  to  myself,  Now  here  I  have  just  to  do  the 
same  amount  of  work  which  it  would  cost  me  to  write 
half  a  dozen  letters  to  half  a  dozen  friends,  giving  them 
our  little  news.  Ah,  it  would  not  do !  In  a  little,  I  was 
again  in  the  sti'uggle  of  mapping  out  my  subject,  and 
cutting  a  straight  track  through  the  iungle  of  the  world 
of  mind ;  looking  about  for  illustrations,  seeking  words 
to  put  my  meaning  with  clearness  and  interest  before  the 
simple  country  folk  I  preach  to.  It  was  not  the  least 
like  letter-writing.     The  clever  writer's  way  of  putting 


32  CONCERNING  THE 

things  was  wrong;  and  though  I  acquit  him  of  any 
crime  beyond  speaking  with  authority  of  a  thing  which 
he  knew  nothing  ahout,  I  must  declare  that  his  repre- 
sentation was  a  misrepresentation.  If  you  have  sufficient 
skill,  you  may  put  what  is  painful  so  that  it  shall  sound 
pleasant ;  you  may  put  a  wearisome  journey  by  railway 
in  such  a  connexion  with  cozy  cushions,  warm  rugs,  a 
review  or  a  new  book,  storm  sweeping  the  fields  without, 
and  warmth  and  ease  within,  that  it  shall  seem  a  delight- 
ful thing.  You  may  put  work,  in  short,  so  that  it  shall 
look  like  play.  But  actual  experiment  breaks  down  the 
representation.  You  cannot  change  the  essential  nature 
of  things.  You  cannot  make  black  white,  though  a 
clever  man  may   make   it  seem  so. 

Still,  we  all  have  a  great  love  for  trying  to  put  any 
hard  work  or  any  painful  business,  which  it  is  certain  we 
must  go  through,  in  such  a  light  as  may  make  it  seem 
less  terrible.  And  it  is  not  difficult  to  deceive  ourselves 
when  we  are  eager  to  be  deceived.  No  one  can  tell  how 
much  comfort  poor  Damien  drew  from  the  way  in  which 
he  put  the  case  on  the  morning  of  his  death  by  horrible 
tortures :  '  The  day  will  be  long,'  he  said,  '  but  it  will 
have  an  end.'  No  one  can  tell  what  a  gleam  of  light 
may  have  darted  upon  the  mind  of  Charles  I.  as  he 
knelt  to  the  block,  when  Bishop  Juxon  put  encouragingly 
the  last  trial  the  monarch  had  to  go  through :  '  one  last 
stage,  somewhat  turbulent  and  troublesome,  but  still  a 
very  sltort  one.'  No  one  can  tell  how  much  it  soothed 
the  self-love  of  Tom  Purdie,  when  Sir  Walter  Scott 
ordered  him  to  cut  down  some  trees  which  Tom  wished 
to  stand,  and  positively  commanded  that  they  should  go 
down  in  spite  of  all  Tom's  arguments  and  expostulations, 
and  all  this  in  the  presence  of  a  number  of  gentlemen 


AKT  OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  33 

before  whom  Tom  could  not  bear  any  impeachment  of 
his  woodcraft ;  no  one,  I  say,  can  tell  how  much  it 
soothed  the  worthy  forester's  self-love  when  after  half  an 
hour's  sulky  meditation  he  thought  of  the  happy  plan  of 
putting  the  thing  on  another  footing  than  that  of  obedi- 
ence to  an  order,  and  looking  up  cheerfully  again,  said, 
'  As  for  those  trees,  I  think  I  '11  tali  your  advice,  Sir 
Walter ! '  Would  it  be  possible,  I  wonder,  thus  pleasant- 
ly to  put  the  writing  of  an  article  so  as  to  do  away  the 
sense  of  the  exertion  which  writing  an  article  implies  ? 
Have  we  not  all  little  tricks  which  we  play  upon  our- 
selves, to  make  our  labour  seem  lighter,  our  dignity 
greater,  our  whole  position  jollier,  than  in  our  secret  soul 
we  know  is  the  fact  ?  Think,  then,  thou  jaded  man, 
bending  over  the  written  page  which  is  one  day  to  attain 
the  dignity  of  print  in  Fraser  or  Blackwood,  how  in 
these  words  thou  art  addressing  many  thousands  of  thy 
enlightened  countrymen  and  thy  fair  countrywomen,  and 
becoming  known  (as  Fielding  puts  it  in  one  of  his 
simply  felicitous  sentences)  '  to  numbers  who  otherwise 
never  saw  or  knew  thee,  and  whom  thou  shalt  never  see 
or  know.'  Think  how  thou  shalt  lie  upon  massive 
library-tables,  in  substantially  elegant  libraries,  side  by 
side  perhaps  with  Helps,  Kingsley,  or  Hazlitt;  how 
thou  shalt  lighten  the  cares  of  middle-aged  men,  and  (if 
thou  art  a  writer  of  fiction)  be  smuggled  up  to  young 
ladies'  chambers;  who  shall  think,  as  they  read  thy 
article  (oh,  much  mistaken !),  what  a  nice  man  thou  art ! 
Alas  !  all  that  way  of  putting  things  is  mere  poetry.  It 
wont  do.  It  still  remains,  and  always  must  remain,  the 
stretch  and  strain  of  mind  and  muscle,  to  write.  Let 
not  the  critic  be  severe  on  people  who  write  ill :  they 
deserve  much  credit  and  sympathy  because  they  write  at 


34  CONCERNING   THE 

all.  But  though  these  grand  and  romantic  ways  of 
putting  the  writing  of  one's  article  will  not  serve,  there 
are  little  prosaic  material  expedients  which  really  avail 
to  put  it  in  a  light  in  which  it  looks  decidedly  less 
laborious.  Slowly  let  the  large  drawer  be  pulled  out 
wherein  lies  the  paper  which  will  serve,  if  we  are  allowed 
to  see  them,  for  many  months  to  come.  There  lies  the 
large  blue  quarto,  so  thick  and  substantial ;  there  the 
massive  foolscap,  so  soft  and  smooth,  over  which  the  pen 
so  pleasantly  and  unscratchingly  glides ;  that  is  the  raw 
material  for  the  article.  Draw  it  forth  deliberately  :  fold 
it  accurately :  then  the  ivory  stridently  cuts  it  through. 
Weigh  the  paper  in  your  hand  ;  then  put  the  case  thus : 
'  Well,  it  is  only  covering  these  pages  with  writing,  after 
all ;  it  is  just  putting  three-and-twenty  lines,  of  so  many 
words  each  on  the  average,  upon  each  of  these  unblotted 
surfaces.'  Surely  there  is  not  so  much  in  that.  Do  not 
think  of  all  the  innumerable  processes  of  mind  that  go 
to  it ;  of  the  weighing  of  the  consequences  of  general 
propositions ;  of  the  choice  of  words ;  of  the  pioneering 
your  track  right  on,  not  turning  to  either  hand  ;  of  the 
memory  taxed  to  bring  up  old  thoughts  upon  your  subject ; 
of  the  clock  striking  unheard  while  you  are  bent  upon 
your  task,  so  much  harder  than  carrying  any  reasonable 
quantity  of  coals,  or  blacking  ever  so  many  boots,  or 
currying  ever  so  many  horses.  Just  stick  to  this  view 
of  the  matter,  just  put  the  thing  this  way  —  that  all  you 
have  to  do  is  to  blacken  so  many  pages,  and  take  the 
comfort  of  that  way  of  putting  it. 

To  such  people  as  we  human  beings  are,  there  is  hard- 
ly any  matter  of  greater  practical  importance  than  what 
we  have  called  the  Art  of  Putting  Things.  For,  to  us, 
things  are  what  they  seem.     They  affect  us  just  according 


ART   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  35 

to  what  we  think  them.  Our  knowledge  of  things,  and 
our  feeling  in  regard  to  things,  are  all  contingent  on  the 
way  in  which  these  things  have  been  put  before  us  ;  and 
what  different  ways  there  are  of  putting  every  possible 
doctrine,  or  opinion,  or  doing,  or  thing,  or  event !  And 
what  mischievous  results,  colouring  all  our  views  and  feel- 
ings, may  follow  from  an  important  subject  having  been 
wrongly,  disagreeably,  injudiciously  put  to  us  when  we 
were  children !  How  many  men  hate  Sunday  all  their 
lives  because  it  was  put  to  them  so  gloomily  in  their 
boyhood  ;  and  how  many  Englishmen,  on  the  other  hand, 
fancy  a  Scotch  Sunday  the  most  disagreeable  of  days 
because  the  case  has  been  wrongly  put  to  them,  while  in 
truth  there  is,  in  intelligent  religious  Scotch  families,  no 
more  pleasant,  cheerful,  genial,  restful,  happy  day.  And 
did  not  Byron  always  hate  Horace,  put  to  him  in  youth 
with  the  associations  of  impositions  and  the  birch  ? 
There  is  no  more  sunshiny  inmate  of  any  home  than  the 
happy-tempered  one  who  has  the  art  of  putting  all  things 
in  a  pleasant  light,  from  the  great  misfortunes  of  life 
down  to  a  broken  carriage-spring,  a  servant's  failings,  a 
child's  salts  and  senna.  You  are  extremely  indignant  at 
some  person  who  has  used  you  ill ;  you  are  worried  and 
annoyed  at  his  misconduct ;  it  is  as  though  you  were 
going  about  with  a  mustard  blister  applied  to  your  mind  : 
when  a  word  or  two  from  some  genial  friend  puts  the 
entire  matter  in  a  new  light,  and  your  irritation  goes,  the 
blister  is  removed,  your  anger  dies  out,  you  would  like  to 
pat  the  offending  being  on  the  head,  and  say  you  bear 
him  no  malice.  And  it  is  wonderful  what  a  little  thing 
sometimes  suffices  to  put  a  case  thus  differently.  When 
you  are  complaining  of  somebody's  ill-usage,  it  will 
change  your  feeling  and  the  look  of  things,  if  the  friend 


30  CONCERNING  THE 

you  are  speaking  to  does  no  more  than  say  of  the  peccant 
brother,    '  Ah  !  poor  fellow  ! '      I  think  that  every  man 
or  woman  who  has  got  servants,  and  who  has  pretty  fre- 
quently to  observe  (I  mean  to  see,  not  to  speak  of)  some 
fault  on  their  part,  owes  a  deep  debt  of  gratitude  to  the 
man,  whoever  he  was,  who  thus  kindly  and  wisely  gave 
us  a  forbearing  stand-point  from  which  to  regard  a  ser- 
vant's failings,  by  putting  the  thing  in  this  way,  true  in 
itself  though  new  to  many,  that  you  cannot  expect  per- 
fection for  fourteen,  or  even  for  fifty  pounds  a-year.     Has 
not  that  way  of  putting  things  sometimes  checked  you 
when  you  meditated  a  sharp  reproof,  and  allayed  anger 
which  otherwise   would    have    been   pretty  hot  ?     Even 
when  a  rogue    cheats  you   (though  that,  I  confess,  is    a 
peculiarly  irritating  thing),  is  not  your  wrath  mollified  by 
putting  the  thing  thus :    that  the  poor  wretch  probably 
needed  very  much  the  money  out  of  which  he  cheated 
you,  and  would  not  have  cheated  you  if  he  could   have 
got  it  honestly  ?     When  a  horse-dealer  sells  you,  at  a 
remarkably  stiff  figure,  a  broken-winded  steed,  do    not 
yield  to  unqualified  indignation.      True,  the  horse-dealer 
is  always  ready  to  cheat ;  but  feel  for  the  poor  fellow, 
every  man  thinks  it  right  to  cheat  Mm  ;  and  with  every 
man's  hand  against  him,  what  wonder  though  his  hand 
should   be   against   every  man  ?     Everything,  you    see, 
turns  on  the  way  in  which  you  put  things.     And  it  is  so 
from  earliest  youth  to  latest  age.     The  old  scholar,  whose 
delight  is  to  sit  among  his  books,  thus  puts  his  library  : — 

My  days  among  the  dead  are  passed: 

Around  me  1  behold, 
Where'er  these  casual  eves  are  cast, 

The  mighty  minds  of  old: 
My  never-failing  friends  are  they, 
With  whom  I  converse  night  ami  day.  * 

*  Sou they. 


ART  OF  PUTTING   THINGS.  37 

You  see  the  library  was  not  mere  shelves  of  books, 
and  the  books  were  not  mere  printed  pages.  You  remem- 
ber how  Robinson  Crusoe,  in  his  cheerful  moods,  put  his 
island  home.  He  sat  down  to  his  lonely  meal,  but  that 
was  not  how  he  put  things.  No.  '  Here  was  my  majesty, 
all  alone  by  myself,  attended  by  my  servants  : '  his  ser- 
vants being  the  dog,  parrot,  and  cat.  I  remember  how 
a  wealthy  merchant,  a  man  quite  of  the  city  as  opposed 
to  the  country,  once  talked  of  emigrating  to  America,  and 
buying  an  immense  tract  of  land,  where  he  and  his  fam- 
ily should  lead  a  simple,  unartificial,  innocent  life.  He 
was  not  in  the  least  cut  out  for  such  a  life,  and  would 
have  been  miserable  in  it,  but  he  was  fascinated  with  the 
notion  because  he  put  it  thus :  —  'I  shall  have  great 
flocks  and  herds,  and  live  in  a  tent  like  Abraham?  And 
that  way  of  putting  things  brought  up  before  the  busy 
man  of  the  nineteenth  century  I  know  not  what  sweet 
picture  of  a  primevally  quiet  and  happy  life.  I  can 
remember  yet  how,  when  I  crept  about  my  father's  study, 
a  little  boy  of  three  years  old,  I  felt  the  magic  of  the  art 
of  putting  things.  All  children  are  restless.  It  is  impos- 
sible for  them  to  remain  still,  and  we  all  know  how  a 
child  in  a  study  worries  the  busy  scholar.  All  admoni- 
tions to  keep  quiet  failed ;  it  was  really  impossible  to 
obey  the_m.  Creep,  creep  about ;  upset  footstools ;  pull 
off  table-covers ;  upset  ink.  But  when  the  thing  was 
put  in  a  different  wray ;  when  the  kind  voice  said,  — 
'  Now,  you  '11  be  my  little  dog :  creep  into  your  house 
there  under  the  table,  and  lie  quite  still, '  there  was  no 
difficulty  in  obeying  that  command :  and,  except  an  occa- 
sional bow-wow,  there  was  perfect  stillness.  The  art  of 
putting  things  had  prevailed.  It  was  necessary  to  keep 
still ;  for  a  dog  in  a  study,  I  knew,  must  keep  still,  and  I 
was  a  dog. 


38  CONCERNING   THE 

It  must  be  a  worrying  thing  for  a  great  warrior  or 
statesman,  fighting  a  great  battle,  or  introducing  a  great 
legislative  measure,  to  remember  that  the  estimation  in 
which  he  is  to  be  held  in  his  own  day  and  country,  and 
in  other  countries  and  ages,  depends  not  at  all  on  what 
his  conduct  is  in  itself,  but  entirely  on  the  way  in  which 
it  shall  be  put  before  mankind  —  represented,  or  misrep- 
resented, in  newspapers,  in  rumours,  in  histories.  How 
very  unlikely  it  is  that  history  will  ever  put  the  case  on 
its  real  merits :  the  characters  of  history  will  either  be 
praised  far  above  their  deserts,  or  abused  far  beyond 
their  sins.  '  Do  not  read  history  to  me,'  said  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  'for  that,  I  know,  must  be  false.'  History 
could  be  no  more  than  the  record  of  the  way  in  which 
men  had  agreed  to  put  things;  and  those  behind  the 
scenes,  the  men  who  pull  the  wires  which  move  the 
puppets,  must  often  have  reason  to  smile  at  the  absurd 
mistakes  into  which  the  history-writing  outsiders  fall. 
And  even  apart  from  ignorance,  or  bias,  or  intention  to 
deceive,  what  a  fearful  thought  it  must  be  to  a  great 
man  taking  a  conspicuous  part  in  some  great  solemnity, 
such  as  the  trial  of  a  queen,  or  the  impeachment  of  a 
governor-general,  to  reflect  that  this  great  solemnity,  and 
his  own  share  in  it,  and  how  he  looked,  and  what  he  said, 
may  possibly  be  put  before  mankind  by  the  great  histo- 
rian Mr.  Wordy  !  One  can  enter  into  Johnson's  feeling 
when,  on  hearing  that  Boswell  intended  to  write  his 
biography,  he  exclaimed,  in  mingled  terror  and  fury  — 
'If  I  thought  that  he  contemplated  writing  my  life,  I 
should  render  that  impossible  by  taking  his!'  It  was 
something  to  shudder  at.  the  idea  of  going  down  to 
posterity  as  represented  by  a  Boswell !  But  the  great 
lexicographer  was  mistaken:    the  Dutch-painter-like  hi- 


ART   OF  PUTTING   THINGS.  39 

ography  showed  him  exactly  as  he  was,  the  great,  little, 
mighty,  weak,  manly,  babyish  mind  and  heart.  And  not 
great  men  alone,  historical  personages,  have  this  reason 
for  disquiet  and  apprehension.  Don't  you  know,  my 
reader  not  unversed  in  the  ways  of  life,  that  it  depends 
entirely  on  how  the  story  is  told,  how  the  thing  is  repre- 
sented or  misrepi-esented,  whether  your  conduct  on  any 
given  occasion  shall  appear  heroic  or  ridiculous,  reason- 
able or  absurd,  natural  or  affected,  modest  or  impudent : 
and  don't  you  know,  too,  what  a  vast  number  of  ill-set 
people  are  always  ready  to  give  the  story  the  unfavour- 
able turn,  to  put  the  matter  in  the  bad  light ;  and  how 
many  more,  not  really  ill-set,  not  really  with  any  mali- 
cious intention,  are  prompted  by  their  love  of  fun,  in 
relating  any  act  of  any  acquaintance,  to  try  to  set  it  in  a 
ridiculous  light?  Your  domestic  establishment  is  shabby 
or  unpretending,  elegant  or  tawdry,  just  as  the  fancy  of 
the  moment  may  lead  your  neighbour  to  put  the  thing. 
Your  equipage  is  a  neat  little  turn-out  or  a  shabby 
attempt,  your  house  is  quiet  or  dull,  yourself  a  genius  or 
a  blockhead,  just  as  it  may  strike  your  friend  on  the 
instant  to  put  the  thing.  And  don't  we  all  know  some 
people  —  not  bad  people  in  the  main  —  who  never  by 
any  chance  put  the  thing  except  in  the  unfavourable 
way  ?  I  have  heard  the  selfsame  house  called  a  snug 
little  place  and  a  miserable  little  hole ;  the  same  man 
called  a  lively  talker  and  an  absurd  rattlebrain;  the  same 
person  called  a  gentlemanlike  man  and  a  missy  piece  of 
affectation ;  the  same  income  called  competence  and 
starvation  ;  the  same  horse  called  a  noble  animal  and  an 
old  white  cow  :  —  the  entire  difference,  of  course,  lay  in 
the  fashion  in  which  the  narrator  chose,  from  inherent 
bonhomie  or  inherent  verjuice,  to  put  the  thing.     While 


40  CONCERNING  THE 

Mr.  Bright  probably  regards  it  as  the  most  ennobling 
occupation  of  humanity  to  buy  in  the  cheapest  and  sell 
in  the  dearest  market,  Byron  said,  as  implying  the 
lowest  degree  of  degradation  — 

Trust  not  for  freedom  to  the  Franks,  — 
They  have  a  king  who  buys  and  sells  ! 

And  it  is  just  the  two  opposite  ways  of  putting  the 
same  admitted  fact,  to  say  that  Britain  is  the  first 
mercantile  community  of  the  world,  and  to  say  that  we 
are  a  nation  of  shopkeepers.  One  way  of  putting  the 
fact  is  the  dignified,  the  other  is  the  degrading.  If  a 
boy  plays  truant  or  falls  asleep  in  church,  it  just  depends 
on  how  you  put  it,  or  how  the  story  is  told,  whether  you 
are  to  see  in  all  this  the  natural  thoughtlessness  of  boy- 
hood, or  a  first  step  towards  the  gallows.  '  Billy  Brown 
stole  some  of  my  apples,'  says  a  kind-hearted  man:  'well, 
poor  fellow,  I  daresay  he  seldom  gets  any.'  '  Billy  Brown 
stole  my  apples,'  says  the  severe  man  :  '  ah,  the  Vagabond, 
he  is  born  to  be  hanged.'  Sydney  Smith  put  Catholic 
Emancipation  as  common  justice  and  common  sense  :  Dr. 
McNeile  puts  it  as  a  great  national  sin,  and  the  origin  of  the 
potato  disease.  John  Foster  mentions  in  his  Diary,  that 
he  once  expostulated  with  a  great,  hulking,  stupid  bump- 
kin, as  to  some  gross  transgression  of  which  he  had  been 
guilty.  Little  effect  was  produced  on  the  bumpkin,  for 
dense  stupidity  is  a  great  duller  of  the  conscience.  Foster 
persisted  :  '  Do  not  you  think,'  he  said, '  that  the  Almighty 
will  be  angry  at  such  conduct  as  yours  ? '  Blockhead  as 
the  fellow  was,  he  could  take  in  the  idea  of  my  essay  :  he 
replied,  'That's  just  as  A  tak's  ut ! '  But  what  struck 
little  Paul  Dombey  as  strange,  that  the  same  bells  rung 
for  weddings  and  for  funerals,  and  that  the  same  sound 
was  merry  or  doleful,  just  as  we  put  it,  is  true  of  many 


ART   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  41 

things  besides  bells.  The  character  of  everything  we 
hear  or  see  is  reflected  upon  it  from  our  own  minds. 
The  sun  sees  the  earth  look  bright  because  it  first  made 
it  so.  You  go  to  a  public  meeting,  my  friend.  You 
make  a  speech.  You  get  on,  you  think,  uncommonly 
well.  When  your  auditor  Mr.  A.  or  Miss  B.  goes  home, 
and  is  asked  there  what  sort  of  appearance  you  made, 
don't  you  fancy  that  the  reply  will  be  affected  in  any 
appreciable  degree  by  the  actual  fact !  It  depends 
entirely  on  the  state  of  the  relator's  nerves  or  digestion, 
or  the  passing  fancy  of  the  moment,  whether  you  shall 
be  said  to  have  done  delightfully  or  disgustingly  ;  whether 
you  shall  be  said  to  have  made  a  brilliant  figure,  or  to  have 
made  a  fool  of  yourself.  You  never  can  be  sure,  though 
you  spoke  with  the  tongue  of  angels,  but  that  ill-nature, 
peevishness,  prejudice,  thoughtlessness,  may  put  the  case 
that  your  speech  was  most  abominable.  Do  you  fancy 
that  you  could  ever  say  or  do  anything  that  Mr.  Snarling 
could  not  find  fault  with,  or  Miss  Limejuice  could  not 
misrepresent? 

Years  ago  I  was  accustomed  to  frequent  the  courts  of 
law,  and  to  listen  with  much  interest  to  the  great  advo- 
cates of  that  time,  as  Follett,  Wilde,  Thesiger,  Kelly. 
Nowhere  in  the  world,  I  think,  is  one  so  deeply  impressed 
with  the  value  of  tact  and  skill  in  putting  things,  as  in 
the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench  at  the  trial  of  an  impor- 
tant case  by  a  jury.  Does  not  all  the  enormous  differ- 
ence, as  great  as  that  between  a  country  bumpkin  and  a 
hog,  between  Follett  and  Mr.  Briefless,  lie  simply  in 
their  respective  powers  of  putting  things  ?  The  actual 
facts,  the  actual  merits  of  the  case,  have  very  little  indeed 
to  do  with  the  verdict,  compared  with  the  counsel's  skill  in 
putting  them  ;  the  artful  marshalling  of  circumstances,  the 


42  CONCERNING  THE 

casting  weak  points  into  shadow,  and  bringing  out  strong 
points  into  glaring  relief.  I  remember  how  I  used  to 
look  with  admiration  at  one  of  these  great  men  when,  in 
his  speech  to  the  jury,  he  was  approaching  some  circum- 
stance in  the  case  which  made  dead  against  him.  It  was 
beautiful  to  see  the  intellectual  gladiator  cautiously 
approaching  the  hostile  fact ;  coming  up  to  it,  tossing  and 
turning  it  about,  and  finally  showing  that  it  made  strongly 
in  his  favour.  Now,  if  that  was  really  so,  why  did  it 
look  as  if  it  made  against  him  ?  Why  should  so  much 
depend  on  the  way  in  which  he  put  it?  Or,  if  the  fact 
was  in  truth  one  that  made  against  him,  why  should  it  be 
possible  for  a  man  to  put  it  so  that  it  should  seem  to  make 
in  his  favour,  and  all  without  any  direct  falsification  of 
facts  or  arguments,  without  any  of  that  mere  vulgar  mis- 
representation which  can  be  met  by  direct  contradiction  ? 
Surely  it  is  not  a  desirable  state  of  matters,  that  a  plaus- 
ible fellow  should  be  able  to  explain  away  some  very 
doubtful  conduct  of  his  own,  and  by  skilful  putting  of 
things  should  be  able  to  make  it  seem  even  to  the  least 
discerning  that  he  is  the  most  innocent  and  injured  of 
human  beings.  And  it  is  provoking,  too,  when  you  feel 
at  once  that  his  defence  is  a  mere  intellectual  juggle,  and 
yet,  with  all  your  logic,  when  you  cannot  just  on  the 
instant  tear  it  to  pieces,  and  put  the  thing  in  the  light  of 
truth.  Indeed,  so  well  is  it  understood  that  by  tact  and 
address  you  may  so  put  things  as  to  make  the  worse 
appear  the  better  reason,  that  the  idea  generally  conveyed, 
when  we  talk  of  putting  things,  is,  that  there  is  something 
wrong,  something  to  be  adroitly  concealed,  some  weak 
point  in  regard  to  which  dust  is  to  be  thrown  into  too 
observant  eves.  There  is  a  common  impression,  not  one 
of  unqualified   truth,  that  when  all  is  above  board,  there 


ART  OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  43 

is  less  need  for  skilful  putting  of  the  case.  Many  people 
think,  though  the  case  is  by  no  means  so,  that  truth  may 
always  be  depended  on  to  tell  its  own  story  and  produce 
its  due  impression.  Not  a  bit  of  it,  However  good  my 
case  might  be,  I  should  be  sorry  to  intrust  it  to  Mr.  Num- 
skull, with  Sir  Fitzroy  Kelly  on  the  other  side. 

It  is  a  coarse  and  stupid  expedient  to  have  recourse  to 
anything  like  falsification  in  putting  things  as  they  would 
make  best  for  yourself,  reader.  And  there  in  no  need 
for  it.  Unless  you  have  absolutely  killed  a  man  and 
taken  his  watch,  or  done  something  equally  decided,  you 
can  easily  represent  circumstances  so  as  to  throw  a  favour- 
able light  upon  yourself  and  your  conduct.  It  is  a  mis- 
take to  fancy  that  in  this  world  a  story  must  be  either 
true  or  false,  a  deed  either  right  or  wrong,  a  man  either 
good  or  bad.  There  are  few  questions  which  can  be 
answered  by  Yes  or  No.  Almost  all  actions  and  events 
are  of  mingled  character  ;  and  there  is  something  to  be 
said  on  both  sides  of  almost  every  subject  which  can  be 
debated.  Who  does  not  remember  how,  when  he  was  a 
boy,  and  had  done  some  mischief  which  he  was  too  honest 
to  deny,  he  revolved  all  he  had  done  over  and  over,  put- 
ting it  in  many  lights,  trying  it  in  all  possible  points  of 
view,  till  he  had  persuaded  himself  that  he  had  done 
quite  right,  or  at  least  that  he  had  done  nothing  that  was 
so  very  wrong,  after  all  ?  There  was  a  lurking  feeling, 
probably,  that  all  this  was  self-deception  ;  and  oh  !  how 
our  way  of  putting  the  case,  so  favourably  to  ourselves, 
vanished  into  air  when  our  Teacher  and  Governor  sternly 
called  us  to  account !  All  those  Jesuitical  artifices  were 
forgotten  ;  and  we  just  felt  that  we  had  done  wrong,  and 
there  was  no  use  trying  to  justify  it. 

The  noble  use  of  the  power  of  putting  things,  is  when 


44  CONCERNING  THE 

a  man  employs  that  power  to  give  tenfold  force  to  truth. 
When  yon  go  and  hear  a  great  preacher,  you  sometimes 
come  away  wishing  heartily  that  the  impression  he  made 
on  you  would  last :  for  you  feel  that  though  what  struck 
you  so  much  was  not  the  familiar  doctrine,  which  you 
knew  quite  well  before,  but  the  way  in  which  he  put  it, 
still  that  startling  view  of  things  was  the  ri°-ht  view. 
Probably  in  the  pulpit  more  than  anywhere  else,  we  feel 
the  difference  between  a  man  who  talks  about  and  about 
things  —  and  another  man  who  puts  them  so  that  we  feel 
them.  And  when  one  thinks  of  all  the  ignorance,  want, 
and  misery  which  surround  us  in  the  wretched  dwellings 
of  the  poor,  which  we  know  all  about  but  take  so  coolly,  it 
is  sad  to  remember  that  Truth  does  not  make  itself  felt 
as  it  really  is,  but  depends  so  sadly  for  the  practical  effect 
upon  the  skill  with  which  it  is  put  —  upon  the  tact, 
graphic  power,  and  earnest  purpose  of  the  man  who  tells 
it.  A  landed  proprietor  will  pass  a  wretched  row  of  cot- 
tages on  his  estate  daily  for  years,  yet  never  think  of 
making  an  effort  to  improve  them  :  who,  when  the  thing 
is  fairly  put  to  him,  will  forthwith  bestir  himself  to  have 
things  brought  into  a  better  state.  He  will  wonder  how 
he  could  have  allowed  matters  to  go  on  in  that  unhappy 
style  so  long;  but  will  tell  you  truly,  that  though  the 
thing  was  before  his  eyes,  he  really  never  before  thought 
of  it  in  that  light. 

Some  people  have  a  happy  knack  for  putting  in  a 
pleasant  way  everything  that  concerns  themselves.  Mr. 
A.'s  son  gets  a  poor  place  as  a  Bank  clerk  :  his  father 
goes  about  saying  that  the  lad  lias  found  a  fine  opening  in 
business.  The  young  man  is  ordained,  and  gets  a  curacy 
on  Salisbury  Plain:  his  father  rejoices  that  there,  never 
seeing  a  human  face,  he  has   abundant  leisure  for  study, 


ART   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  45 

and  for  improving  bis  mind.  Or,  the  curacy  is  in  the 
most  crowded  part  of  Manchester  or  Bethnal  Green  :  the 
father  now  rejoices  that  his  son  has  opportunities  of 
acquiring  clerical  experience,  and  of  visiting  the  homes 
of  the  poor.  Such  a  man's  house  is  in  a  well-wooded 
country :  the  situation  is  delightfully  sheltered.  He 
removes  to  a  bare  district  without  a  tree  :  —  ah  !  there  he 
has  beautiful  pure  air  and  extensive  views.  It  is  well  for 
human  beings  when  they  have  the  pleasant  art  of  thus 
putting  things  ;  for  many,  we  all  know,  have  the  art  of 
putting  things  in  just  the  opposite  way.  They  look 
at  all  things  through  jaundiced  eyes ;  and  as  things 
appear  to  themselves,  so  they  put  them  to  others.  You 
remember,  reader,  how  once  upon  a  time  David  Hume, 
the  historian,  kindly  sent  Rousseau  a  present  of  a  dish 
of  beef-steaks.  Rousseau  fired  at  this :  he  discerned  in 
it  a  deep-laid  insult :  he  put  it  that  Hume,  by  sending  the 
steaks,  meant  to  insinuate  that  he,  Rousseau,  could  not 
afford  to  buy  proper  food  for  himself.  Ah,  I  have  known 
various  Rousseaus !  They  had  not  the  genius,  indeed, 
but  they  had  all  the  wrongheadedness. 

Who  does  not  know  the  contrasted  views  of  mankind 
and  of  life  that  pervade  all  the  writings  of  Dickens  and  of 
Thackeray  ?  It  is  the  same  world  that  lies  before  both, 
but  how  differently  they  put  it !  And  look  at  the  accounts 
in  the  Blue  and  Yellow  newspapers  respectively,  of  the 
borough  Member's  speech  to  his  constituents  last  night 
in  the  Corn  Exchange.  Judge  by  the  account  in  the  one 
paper,  and  he  is  a  Burke  for  eloquence,  a  Peel  for  tact,  a 
Shippen  for  incorruptible  integrity.  Judge  by  the  account 
in  the  other,  and  you  would  wonder  where  the  electors 
caught  a  mortal  who  combines  so  remarkably  ignorance, 
stupidity,  carelessness,  inefficiency,  and  dishonesty.     As 


-iO  CONCERNING   THE 

for  the  speech,  one  journal  declares  it  was  fluent,  the 
other  that  it  was  stuttering  ;  one  that  it  was  frank,  the 
other  that  it  was  trimming ;  one  that  it  was  sense,  the 
other  that  it  was  nonsense.  Nor  need  it  be  supposed  that 
either  journal  intends  deliberate  falsehood.  Each  believes 
his  own  way  of  putting  the  case  to  be  the  right  way ;  and 
the  truth,  in  most  instances,  doubtless  lies  midway  between. 
But  in  fact,  till  the  end  of  time,  there  will  be  at  least  two 
ways  of  putting  everything.  Perhaps  the  M.  P.  warmed 
with  his  subject,  and  threw  himself  heart  and  soul  into 
his  speech.  Shall  we  say  that  he  spoke  with  eloquent 
energy,  or  shall  we  put  it  that  he  bellowed  like  a  bull  ? 
Was  he  quiet  and  correct  ?  Then  we  may  choose  be- 
tween saying  that  he  is  a  classical  speaker,  and  that  he 
was  as  stiff  as  a  poker.  He  made  some  jokes,  perhaps  : 
take  your  choice  whether  you  shall  call  him  clever  or 
flippant,  a  wit  or  a  buffoon.  And  so  of  everybody  else. 
You  know  a  clever,  well-read  young  woman :  you  may 
either  call  her  such,  or  talk  sneeringly  of  blue-stockings. 
You  meet  a  lively,  merry  girl,  who  laughs  and  talks  with 
all  the  frankness  of  innocence.  You  would  say  of  her, 
my  kindly  reader,  something  like  what  I  have  just  said  ; 
but  crabbed  Mrs.  Backbite  will  have  it  that  she  is  a  romp, 
a  boisterous  hoyden,  of  most  unformed  manners.  Per- 
haps Mrs.  Backbite,  spitefully  shaking  her  head,  says  >ha 
trusts,  she  really  hopes,  there  is  no  harm  in  the  girl  — 
but  certainly  no  daughter  of  hers  should  be  allowed  to 
associate  with  her.  And  not  merely  does  the  way,  favour- 
able or  unfavourable,  in  which  the  thing  shall  be  put, 
depend  mainly  on  the  temperament  of  the  person  who  puts 
it — BO  thai  you  >hall  know  beforehand  thai  Mr.  Snarling 
will  always  give  the  unfavourable  view,  and  Mr.  Jollikin 
the  favourable  :  but  a  further  element  of  disturbance  is 


ART   OF  PUTTING   THINGS.  47 

introduced  by  the  fact,  that  often  the  narrator's  mood  is 
such,  that  it  is  a  toss-up,  five  minutes  before  he  begins  to 
tell  his  story,  whether  he  shall  put  the  conduct  of  his  hero 
as  good  or  bad. 

Who  needs  the  art  of  putting  things  more  than  the 
painter  of  portraits  ?  Who  sees  so  much  of  the  little- 
ness, the  petty  vanity,  the  silliness,  of  mankind  ?  It  must 
be  hard  for  such  a  man  to  retain  much  respect  for  human 
nature.  The  lurking  belief  in  the  mind  of  every  man, 
that  he  is  remarkably  good-looking,  concealed  in  daily 
intercourse  with  his  fellows,  breaks  out  in  the  painter's 
studio.  And,  without  positive  falsification,  how  cleverly 
the  artist  often  contrives  to  put  the  features  and  figure  of 
his  sitter  in  a  satisfactory  fashion  !  Have  not  you  seen 
the  portrait  of  a  plain,  and  even  a  very  ugly  person, 
which  was  strikingly  like,  and  still  very  pleasant  looking 
and  almost  pretty  ?  Have  not  you  seen  things  so  skil- 
fully put,  that  the  little  snob  looked  dignified,  the  vulgar 
boor  gentlemanlike,  the  plain-featured  woman  angelic  — 
and  all  the  while  the  likeness  was  accurately  preserved  ? 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  the  case  of  many  of  those  fine 
things  which  stir  the  heart  and  bring  moisture  to  the 
eye,  it  depends  entirely  on  the  way  in  which  they  are 
put,  whether  they  shall  strike  us  as  pathetic  or  silly,  as 
sublime  or  ridiculous.  The  venerable  aspect  of  the  de- 
throned monarch,  led  in  the  triumphal  procession  of  the 
Roman  Emperor,  and  looking  indifferently  on  the  scene, 
as  he  repeated  often  the  words  of  Solomon,  '  Vanity,  van- 
ity, all  is  vanity,'  depends  much  for  the  effect  it  always 
produces  on  the  reader,  upon  the  stately  yet  touching 
fashion  in  which  Gibbon  tells  the  story.  So  with  Haz- 
litt's  often-recurring  account  of  Poussin's  celebrated 
picture,  the  Et  in  Arcadia  Ego.     As  for  Burke  flinging 


48  CONCERNING  THE 

the  dagger  upon  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
Brougham  falling  on  his  knees  in  the  House  of  Peers, 
what  a  ridiculous  representation  Punch  could  give  of 
such  things  !  What  shall  he  said  of  Addison,  often  tipsy 
in  life,  yet  passing  away  with  the  words  addressed  to  his 
regardless  step-son, '  See  in  what  peace  a  Christian  can 
die  ! '  We  need  not  think  of  things  which  are  essentially 
ridiculous,  though  their  perpetrators  intended  them  to  be 
sublime :  as  Lord  Ellenborough's  proclamation  about  the 
Gates  of  Somnauth,  Sir  William  Codrington's  despatch 
as  to  the  blowing  up  of  Sebastopol,  and  all  the  grand  pas- 
sages in  the  writings  of  Mr.  Wordy.  Let  me  confess 
that  I  do  think  it  a  very  unhealthy  sign  of  the  times, 
this  love  which  now  exists  of  putting  grave  matters 
in  a  ridiculous  light,  which  produces  Comic  Histories  of 
England,  Comic  Blackstones,  Comic  Parliamentary  De- 
bates, Comic  Latin  Grammars,  and  the  like.  Dreary 
indeed  must  be  the  fun  of  such  books ;  but  that  is  not  the 
worst  of  them.  Yet  one  cannot  seriously  object  to  such  a 
facetious  serial  as  Punch,  which  represents  the  funny 
element  in  our  sad  insular  character.  Punch  lives  by  the 
art  of  putting  things,  and  putting  them  in  a  single  way ; 
but  how  wonderfully  well,  how  successfully,  how  genially, 
he  puts  all  things  funnily  !  But  to  burlesque  Macbeth 
or  Othello,  to  travesty  Virgil,  to  parody  the  soliloquy  in 
Hamlet,  though  it  may  be  putting  things  in  a  novel  and 
amusing  way,  approaches  to  the  nature  of  sacrilege. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  the  ludicrous  way  of  putting  things 
has  served  an  admirable  purpose  ;  as  in  the  imitations  of 
Southey's  Sapphics  and  Kotzebue's  morality  in  the 
Poetry  of  the  Anti-jacobin.  And  the  ludicrous  way  of 
putting  things  has  sometimes  brought  them  much  more 
vividly  home  to  '  men's  business  and  bosoms/  as  in  Syd- 


ART  OF  PUTTING   THINGS.  49 

ney  Smith's  description  of  the  possihle  results  of  a  French 
invasion.  Nor  has  it  failed  to  answer  the  end  of  most 
cogent  argument,  as  in  his  description  of  Mrs.  Partington 
sweeping  back  the  Atlantic  Ocean. 

Do  not  fancy,  my  friend,  that  you  can  by  possibility  so 
live  that  ill-natured  folk  will  not  be  able  to  put  every- 
thing you  do  unfavourably.  The  old  man  with  the  ass 
was  a  martyr  to  the  desire  so  to  act  that  there  should  be 
no  possibility  of  putting  what  he  did  as  wrong.  And 
when  John  Gilpin's  wife,  for  fear  the  neighbours  should 
think  her  proud,  caused  the  chaise  to  draw  up  five 
doors  off,  rely  upon  it  some  of  the  neighbours  would  say 
she  did  so  in  the  design  of  making  her  carriage  the 
more  conspicuous.  When  you  give  a  dinner-party,  and 
after  your  guests  are  gone,  sit  down  and  review  the  prog- 
ress of  the  entertainment,  thinking  how  nicely  every- 
thing went  on,  do  you  remember,  madam,  that  at  that 
same  moment  your  guests  are  seated  in  their  own  homes, 
putting  all  the  circumstances  in  quite  a  different  way : 
laughing  at  your  hired  greengrocer,  who,  (you  were  just 
saying)  looked  so  like  a  butler ;  execrating  your  cham- 
pagne, which  (you  are  this  moment  flattering  yourself) 
passed  for  the  product  of  the  grape  and  not  of  the  goose- 
berry ;  and  generally  putting  yourself,  your  children, 
your  house,  your  dinner,  your  company,  your  music,  into 
such  ridiculous  lights,  that,  if  you  knew  it  (which  happily 
you  never  will),  you  would  wish  that  you  had  mingled 
a  little  strychnine  with  the  vintage  so  vilified.  Still,  it 
is  pleasant  to  believe  that  there  is  no  real  malice  in  the 
way  in  which  most  people  cut  up  their  friends  behind 
their  backs.  You  really  have  a  very  kindly  feeling 
towards  Mr.  A.  or  Mrs.  B.,  though  you  do  turn  them  into 
ridicule  in  their  absence.     After  laughing  at  Mr.  A.  to 

4 


?>n  CONCERNING   THE 

Mrs.  B.,  you  are  quite  ready  to  laugh  at  Mrs.  B.  to 
Mr.  A.  The  truth  appears  to  be,  that  all  this  is  an  in- 
stance  of  that  reaction  which  is  necessary  to  human  beings. 
In  people's  presence  politeness  requh-es  that  you  should 
put  everything  that  concerns  them  in  the  most  agreeable 
and  favourable  way.  Impatient  of  this  constraint,  you 
revenge  yourself  upon  it  whenever  circumstances  permit, 
by  putting  things  in  the  opposite  fashion.  I  feel  not  the 
least  enmity  towards  Mr.  Snooks  for  saying  behind  my 
back  that  my  essays  are  wretched  trash.  He  has  In  - 
quently  said  in  my  presence  that  they  are  far  superior  to 
anything  ever  written  by  Macaulay,  Milton,  or  Shaks- 
peare.  I  knew  that  after  my  dear  friend's  civility  had 
been  subjected  to  so  violent  a  strain  as  was  implied  in  his 
making  the  latter  declaration,  it  would  of  necessity  fly 
back,  like  a  released  bow.  when  ever  he  left  me  ;  and  that 
the  first  mutual  acquaintance  he  met  would  have  the 
satisfaction  of  hearing  the  case  put  in  a  very  different 
way.  And  no  doubt,  if  my  dear  friend  were  put  upon 
his  oath,  his  true  opinion  of  me  would  transpire  as  nearly 
midway  between  the  two  ways  of  putting  it  respectively 
before  my  face  and  behind  my  back. 

You  are  a  country  clergyman,  let  us  say,  my  reader, 
with  a  small  parish  ;  and  while  you  do  your  duty  faith- 
fully and  zealously,  you  spend  a  spare  hour  now  and  then 
upon  a  review  or  a  magazine  article.  You  like  the 
thought  that  thus,  from  your  remote  solitude,  you  are 
addressing  a  larger  audience  than  that  which  you  address 
Sunday  by  Sunday.  You  think  that  reasonable  and  can- 
did people  Mould  say  that  this  is  an  improving  and  pleas- 
ant way  of  employing  a  little  leisure  time,  instead  of 
rusting  into  stupidity  or  mooning  about  blankly,  or  smok- 
ing yourself  into  vacancy,  or  reading  novels,  or   listening 


AET   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  51 

to  and  retailing  gossip,  or  hanging  about  the  streets  of 
the  neighbouring  county  town,  or  growing  sarcastic  and 
misanthropic.  But  don't  you  remember,  my  clear  friend, 
that  although  you  put  the  case  in  this  way,  it  is  highly 
probable  that  some  of  your  acquaintances,  whose  prof- 
fered contributions  to  the  periodical  with  which  you  are 
supposed  to  be  connected  have  been  '  declined  with 
thanks,'  and  whom  malignant  editors  exclude  from  the 
opportunity  of  enlightening  an  ungrateful  world,  may 
put  the  matter  very  differently  indeed  ?  True,  you  are 
always  thoroughly  prepared  with  your  sermon  on  Sun- 
days, you  are  assiduous  in  your  care  of  the  sick  and  the 
aged,  you  have  cottage  lectures  here  and  there  through- 
out the  parish,  you  teach  classes  of  children  and  young 
people,  you  know  familiarly  the  face  and  the  circum- 
stances of  every  soul  of  your  population,  and  you  hon- 
estly give  your  heart  and  strength  to  your  sacred  calling, 
suffering  nothing  whatever  to  interfere  with  that :  but  do 
you  fancy  that  all  this  diligence  will  prevent  Miss  Lem- 
onjuice  and  Mr.  Flyblow  from  exclaiming,  '  Ah,  see  Mr. 
Smith ;  isn't  it  dreadful  ?  See  how  he  neglects  his 
proper  work,  and  spends  his  time,  his  whole  time,  in  writ- 
ing articles  for  the  Quarterly  Review  !  It's  disgraceful ! 
The  bishop,  if  he  did  his  duty,  would  pull  him  up  !  ' 

A  striking  instance  of  the  effect  of  skilfully  putting 
things  may  be  found  in  the  diary  of  Warren  Hastings. 
The  great  Governor-General  always  insisted  that  his 
conduct  of  Indian  affairs  had  been  just  and  beneficent, 
and  that  the  charges  brought  by  Burke  and  Sheridan 
were  without  foundation  in  truth.  He  declared  that  he 
had  that  conviction  in  the  centre  of  his  being ;  that  he 
was  as  sure  of  it  as  of  his  own  existence.  But  as  he 
listened  to  the  opening  speech  of  Burke,  he  tells  us  he 


52  CONCERNING  THE 

« 

saw  things  in  a  new  light.  He  felt  the  spell  of  the  way 
in  which  the  great  orator  put  things.  Could  this  realty  be 
the  right  way  ?  '  For  half  an  hour,'  says  Hastings,  '  I 
looked  up  at  Burke  in  a  reverie  of  wonder,  and  during 
that  time  I  actually  felt  myself  the  most  guilty  being  upon 
earth  ! '  But  Hastings  adds  that  he  did  what  the  boy 
who  has  played  truant  does  —  he  took  refuge  in  his  own 
way  of  putting  things.  '  I  recurred  to  my  own  heart,  and 
there  found  what  sustained  me  under  all  this  accusation.' 

A  young  lad's  choice  of  a  profession  depends  mainly 
upon  the  way  in  which  the  life  of  that  profession  is  put 
before  him.  If  a  boy  is  to  go  to  the  bar,  it  will  be  expe- 
dient to  make  the  Chancellorship  the  prominent  feature  in 
the  picture  presented  to  him.  It  will  be  better  to  keep 
in  the  background  the  lonely  evenings  in  the  chambers  at 
the  Temple,  the  weary  back-benches  in  court,  the  heart- 
sickening  waiting  year  after  year.  And  the  first  impres- 
sion, strongly  rooted,  will  probably  last.  I  love  my  own 
profession.  I  would  exchange  its  life  and  its  work  for  no 
other  position  on  earth  ;  but  I  feel  that  I  owe  part  of  its 
fascination  to  the  fragrance  of  boyish  fancies  of  it  which 
linger  yet.  Blessed  be  the  kind  and  judicious  parent  or 
preceptor,  whose  skilful  putting  of  things  long  ago  has 
given  to  our  vocation,  whatever  it  may  be,  a  charm  which 
can  overcome  the  disgust  which  might  otherwise  come 
of  the  hard  realities,  the  little  daily  worries,  the  discour- 
agements and  frustrated  hopes  !  How  much  depends  on 
first  impressions  —  on  the  way  in  which  a  man,  a  place,  a 
book  is  put  to  us  for  the  first  time  !  Something  of  cheer- 
lessness  and  dreariness  will  always  linger  about  even  the 
summer  aspect  of  the  house  which  you  firs!  approached 
when  the  winter  afternoon  was  closing  in,  dark,  gusty, 
colli,  miserable-looking.     What  a  difference  it  makes  to 


AET   OF   PUTTING  THINGS.  53 

the  little  man  who  is  to  have  a  tooth  pulled  out,  whether 
the  dentist  approaches  with  a  grievous  look,  in  silence, 
with  the  big  forceps  conspicuous  in  his  hand  ;  or  comes 
up  cheerfully,  with  no  display  of  steel,  and  says,  with  a 
smiling  face, '  Come,  my  little  friend,  it  will  be  over  in  a 
moment ;  you  will  hardly  have  time  to  feel  it ;  you  will 
stand  it  like  a  brick,  and  mamma  will  be  proud  of  having 
such  a  brave  little  boy  ! '  Or,  if  either  man  or  boy  has  a 
long  task  to  go  through,  how  much  more  easily  it  will  be 
done  if  it  is  put  in  separate  divisions  than  if  it  is  set 
before  one  all  in  a  mass  !  Divide  et  impera  states  a  grand 
principle  in  the  art  of  putting  things.  If  your  servant 
is  to  clear  away  a  mass  of  snow,  he  will  do  it  in  half  the 
time  and  with  twice  the  pleasure  if  you  first  mark  it  out  into 
squares,  to  be  cleared  away  one  after  the  other.  By  the 
make  of  our  being  we  like  to  have  many  starts  and  many 
arrivals  :  it  does  not  do  to  look  too  far  on  without  a  break. 
I  remember  the  driver  of  a  mail-coach  telling  me,  as  I 
sat  on  the  box  through  a  sixty  mile  drive,  that  it  would 
weary  him  to  death  to  drive  that  road  daily  if  it  were  as 
straight  as  a  railway  :  he  liked  the  turnings  and  windings, 
which  put  the  distance  in  the  form  of  successive  bits.  It 
was  sound  philosophy  in  Sydney  Smith  to  advise  us, 
whether  physically  or  morally,  to  '  take  short  views.'  It 
would  knock  you  up  at  once  if,  when  the  railway-carriage 
moved  out  of  the  station  at  Edinburgh,  you  began  to  trace 
in  your  mind's  eye  the  whole  route  to  London.  Never  do 
that.  Think  first  of  Dunbar,  then  of  Newcastle,  then  of 
York,  and  putting  the  thing  thus,  you  will  get  over  the 
distance  without  fatigue  of  mind.  What  little  child 
would  have  heart  to  begin  the  alphabet,  if,  before  he 
did  so,  you  put  clearly  before  him  all  the  school  and  col- 
lege work  of  which  it  is  the  beginning  ?     The  poor  little 


54  CONCERNING    I'llK 

thing  would  knock  up  al  once,  wearied  oul  by  your  want 
of  skill  in  putting  things.  And  so  it  is  that  Providence, 
kindly  and  gradually  putting  tiling,  wiles  us  onward,  still 
keeping  hope  and  heart,  through  the  trials  and  cares  of 
life.  Ah.  it'  we  had  had  it  put  to  us  at  the  outset  how 
much  we  should  have  to  go  through,  to  reach  even  our 
present  stage  in  life,  we  should  have  been  ready  to  think 
it  the  best  plan  to  sit  down  and  die  al  once!  But,  in 
compassion  for  human  weakness,  the  Greal  Director  and 
Shower  ot'('\onts  practises  the  Art  of  Putting  Things. 
Might  we  not  sometimes  do  so  when  we  do  not?  "When 
w  c  see  some  poor  fellow  grumbling  at  his  lot,  and 
shirking  his  duty,  might  not  :i  little  skill  employed  in 
putting  these  things  in  a  proper  light  serve  better  than 
merely  expressing  our  contempt  or  indignation?  A 
single  sentence  might  make  him  see  that  what  he  was 
complaining  of  was  reasonable  and  right.  It  is  quite 
wonderful  from  what  odd  and  perverse  points  of  view 
people  will  look  at  things:  and  then  things  look  so 
\er\  different.  The  bill  behind  your  house,  which  you 
have  seen  a  thousand  times,  von  would  not  know  if  you 
approached  it  from  some  unwonted  quarter.  Now.  if  you 
see  a  man  afflicted  with  a  perverse  t\\  ist  of  mind,  making 
him  put  thing-  in  general  or  something  in  particular  in  a 
wrong  way,  you  do  him  a  much  kinder  turn  in  directing 
him  how  to  put  thing-  rightly,  than  if  you  were  a  skilful 
surgeon  and  cured  him  of  the  most  fearful  squinl  that 
e\  er  hid  behind  blue  spectacles. 

Did  not  Franklin  go  to  bear  Whitefield  preach  a  char- 
ity sermon  resolved  not  to  give  a  penny;  and  was  he  not 
mi  thoroughly  overcome  by  the  great  preacher's  way  of 
putting  the  claim-  of  the  charity  which  he  was  advocat- 
ing, that  he  ended  by  emptying  his  pocket-  into  the  plate? 


ART   OF  PUTTING   THINGS.  55 

I  daresay  Alexander  the  Great  was  somewhat  stag- 
gered in  his  plans  of  conquest  by  Parmenio's  way  of 
putting  things.  '  After  you  have  conquered  Persia,  what 
will  you  do  ? '  '  Then  I  shall  conquer  India.'  '  After 
you  have  conquered  India,  what  will  you  do?'  '  Con- 
quer Scythia.'  'And  after  you  have  conquered  Scytlna. 
what  will  you  do  ?  '  '  Sit  down  and  rest.'  '  Well,'  said 
Parmenio  to  the  conqueror,  '  why  not  sit  down  and  rest 
now  ? "  I  trust  young  Sheridan  was  proof  against  his 
father's  way  of  putting  things,  when  the  young  man  said 
he  meant  to  go  down  a  coalpit.  •  Why  go  down  a  coal- 
pit ! '  said  Sheridan  the  elder.  '  Merely  to  be  able  to  say 
I  have  been  there.'  '  You  blockhead,'  replied  the  high- 
principled  sire.  '  what  is  there  to  keep  you  from  saying 
so  without  soinor? ' 

I  remember  witnessing  a  decided  success  of  the  art  of 
putting  things.  A  vulgar  rich  man,  who  had  recently 
bought  an  estate  in  Aberdeenshire,  exclaimed.  '  It  is 
monstrous  hard  ;  I  have  just  had  this  morning  to  pay 
forty  pounds  of  stipend  to  the  parish  minister  for  my 
property.  Now.  I  never  enter  the  parish  church  (nor 
any  other,  he  might  have  added),  and  why  should  I  pay 
to  maintain  a  Church  to  which  I  don't  belong?'  I  omit 
the  oaths  which  served  as  sauce.  Now,  that  was  Mr. 
Oddbody's  way  of  putting  things,  and  you  would  say  his 
case  was  a  hard  one.  But  a  quiet  man  who  was  present 
changed  the  aspect  of  matters.  '  Is  it  not  true,  Mr.  Odd- 
body,'  he  said,  •  that  when  you  bought  your  estate,  its 
rental  was  reckoned  after  deducting  the  payment  you 
mention  ;  that  the  exact  value  of  your  annual  payment 
to  the  minister  was  calculated,  and  the  amount  deducted 
from  the  price  you  paid  for  the  property  ?  And  is  it  not 
therefore   true,  that  not  a  penny  of  that  forty  pounds 


56  CONCERNING   THE 

really  conies  out  of  your  pocket?'  Mr.  Oddbody's  face 
elongated.  The  bystanders  unequivocally  signified  what 
they  thought  of  him ;  and  as  long  as  he  lived  he  never 
failed  to  be  remembered  as  the  man  who  had  tried  to 
extort  sympathy  by  false  pretences. 

To  no  man  is  tact  in  putting  things  more  essential 
than  to  the  clergyman.  An  injudicious  and  unskilful 
preacher  may  so  put  the  doctrines  which  he  sets  forth  as 
to  make  them  appear  revolting  and  absurd.  It  is  a  fear- 
ful thing  to  hear  a  stupid  fellow  preaching  upon  the  doc- 
trine of  Election.  He  may  so  put  that  doctrine  that  he 
shall  fill  every  clever  young  lad  who  hears  him  with  prej- 
udices against  Christianity,  which  may  last  through  life. 
And  in  advising  one's  parishioners,  especially  in  admin- 
istering reproof  where  needful,  let  the  parish  priest,  if  he 
would  do  good,  call  into  play  all  his  tact.  With  the  best 
intentions,  through  lack  of  skill  in  putting  things,  he  may 
do  great  mischief.  Let  the  calomel  be  concealed  beneath 
the  jelly.  Not  that  I  counsel  sneakiness ;  that  is  worse 
than  the  most  indiscreet  honesty.  There  is  no  need  to 
put  things,  like  the  Dean  immortalized  by  Pope,  who 
when  preaching  in  the  Chapel  Royal,  said  to  his  hearers 
that  unless  they  led  religious  lives  they  would  ultimately 
reach  a  place  '  which  he  would  not  mention  in  so  polite 
an  assembly.'  Nor  will  it  be  expedient  to  put  things 
like  the  contemptible  wretch  who,  preaching  before 
Louis  XIV.,  said  Nous  mourrons  tous  ;  then,  turning  to 
the  king,  and  bowing  humbly,  presque  tons.  And  it  is 
only  in  addressing  quite  exceptional  congregations  that 
it  would  now-a-d:iys  be  regarded  as  a  piece  of  proper 
respect  tor  the  mighty  of  the  earth,  were  the  preacher,  in 
stating  that  all  who  heard  him  were  sinners,  to  add,  by 
way  of  reservation,  all  who  have  less  than  a  thousand  a 
year. 


AET   OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  57 

Any  man  who  approaches  the  matter  with  a  candid 
spirit,  must  be  much  struck  by  the  difference  between  the 
Protestant  and  the  Roman  Catholic  ways  of  putting  the 
points  at  issue  between  the  two  great  Churches.  The 
Roman  prayers  are  in  Latin,  for  instance.  A  violent 
Protestant  says  that  the  purpose  is  to  keep  the  people  in 
ignorance.  A  strong  Romanist  tells  you  that  Latin  was 
the  universal  language  of  educated  men  when  these 
prayers  were  drawn  up  ;  and  puts  it  that  it  is  a  fine 
thins  to  think  that  in  all  Romish  churches  over  Chris- 
tendom  the  devotions  of  the  people  are  expressed 
in  the  selfsame  words.  Take  keeping  back  the  Bible 
from  the  people.  To  us  nothing  appears  more  flagrant 
than  to  deprive  any  man  of  God's  written  word.  Still 
the  Romanist  has  something  to  say  for  himself.  He  puts 
it  that  there  is  so  much  difficulty  in  understanding  much 
of  the  Bible  —  that  such  pernicious  errors  have  followed 
from  false  interpretations  of  it.  Think,  even,  of  the 
dogma  of  the  infallibility  of  the  Church.  The  Protes- 
tant puts  that  dogma  as  an  instance  of  unheard-of  arro- 
gance. The  Romanist  puts  it  as  an  instance  of  deep 
humility  and  earnest  faith.  He  says  he  does  not  hold 
that  the  Church,  in  her  own  wisdom,  is  able  to  keep 
infallibly  right ;  but  he  says  that  he  has  perfect  confi- 
dence that  God  will  not  suffer  the  Church  deliberately 
to  fall  into  error.  Here,  certainly,  we  have  two  very 
different  ways  of  putting  the  same  things. 

But  who  shall  say  that  there  are  no  more  than  two 
ways  of  putting  any  incident,  or  any  opinion,  or  any  char- 
acter ?  There  are  innumerable  ways  —  ways  as  many 
as  are  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the  men  that  put  them.  You 
have  to  describe  an  event,  have  you  ?  Then  you  may 
put  it  in  the  plain  matter-of-fact  way,  like  the  Times'  re- 


58  CONCERNING   THE 

porter ;  or  in  the  sublime  way,  like  Milton  and  Mr. 
Wordy  ;  or  in  the  ridiculous  way,  like  Punch  (of  design), 
and  Mr.  Wordy  (unintentionally)  ;  or  in  the  romantic 
way,  like  Mr.  G.  P.  R.  James ;  or  in  the  minutely  cir- 
cumstantial way,  like  Defoe  or  Poe  ;  or  in  the  affectedly 
simple  way,  like  Peter  Bell ;  or  in  the  forcible,  know- 
ing way,  like  Macaulay  ;  or  in  the  genial,  manly,  good- 
humoured  way,  like  Sydney  Smith;  or  in  the  flippant 
way,  like  Mr.  Richard  Swiveller,  who  when  he  went 
to  ask  for  an  old  gentleman,  inquired  as  to  the  health 
of  the  '  ancient  buffalo  ; '  or  in  the  lackadaisical  way,  like 
many  young  ladies ;  or  in  the  whining,  grumbling  way, 
like  many  silly  people  whom  it  is  unnecessary  to  name ; 
or  in  the  pretentious,  lofty  way,  introducing  familiarly 
many  titled  names  without  the  least  necessity,  like  many 
natives  of  beautiful  Erin. 

What  nonsense  it  is  to  say,  as  it  has  been  said,  that 
the  effect  of  anything  spoken  or  written  depends  upon 
the  essential  thought  alone  !  Why,  nine-tenths  of  the 
practical  power  depends  on  the  way  in  which  it  is  put. 
Somebody  has  asserted  that  any  thought  which  is  not  elo- 
quent in  any  words  whatever,  is  not  eloquent  at  all.  He 
might  as  well  have  .-aid  that  black  was  white.  Not  to 
.-peak  of  the  charm  of  the  mere  music  of  gracefully  mod- 
ulated words,  and  felicitously  arranged  phrases,  how 
much  there  is  in  beautifully  logical  treatment,  and  beauti- 
fully clear  development,  that  will  interest  a  cultivated 
man  in  a  speech  or  a  treatise,  quite  irre.-pective  of  its 
subject.  I  have  known  a  very  eminent  man  say  that  it 
was  a  delight  to  him  to  hear  Follett  make  a  speech,  he 
did  not  care  about  what.  The  matter  was  no  matter;  the 
intellectual  treat  was  u>  watch  how  the  great  advocate 
put  it.      And  we  have  all  read  with  delight  stories  with 


ART   OF   PUTTING  THINGS.  59 

no  incident  and  little  character,  yet  which  derived  a 
nameless  fascination  from  the  way  in  which  they  were 
told.  Tell  me  truly,  my  fair  reader,  did  you  not  shed 
some  tears  over  Dickens's  story  of  Richard  Doubledick  ? 
Could  you  have  read  that  story  aloud  without  breaking 
down  ?  And  yet,  was  there  ever  a  story  with  less  in  it  ? 
But  how  beautifully  Dickens  put  what  little  there  was, 
and  how  the  melody  of  the  closing  sentences  of  the  suc- 
cessive paragraphs  lingers  on  the  ear  !  And  you  have 
not  forgotten  the  exquisite  touches  with  which  Mrs. 
Stowe  put  so  simple  a  matter  as  a  mother  looking  into 
her  dead  baby's  drawer.  I  have  known  an  attempt  at  the 
pathetic  made  on  a  kindred  topic  provoke  yells  of  laugh- 
ter; but  I  could  not  bear  the  woman,  and  hardly  the 
man,  who  could  read  Mrs.  Stowe's  putting  of  that  simple 
conception  without  the  reverse  of  smiles.  Many  readers, 
too,  will  not  forget  how  more  sharply  they  have  seen 
many  places  and  things,  from  railway  engine  sheds  to 
the  Britannia  Bridge,  when  put  by  the  graphic  pen  of 
Sir  Francis  Head.  That  lively  baronet  is  the  master  of 
clear,  sharp  presentment. 

1  have  not  hitherto  spoken  of  such  ways  of  putting 
things  as  were  practised  in  King  Hudson's  railway  re- 
ports, or  in  those  of  the  Glasgow  Western  Bank,  cooked 
to  make  things  pleasant  by  designed  misrepresentation. 
So  far  we  have  been  thinking  of  comparatively  innocent 
variations  in  the  ways  of  putting  things  —  of  putting  the 
best  foot  foremost  in  a  comparatively  honest  way.  Bat 
how  much  intentional  misrepresentation  there  is  in  Brit- 
ish society  !  How  few  people  can  tell  a  thing  exactly  as 
they  saw  it !  It  goes  in  one  colour,  and  comes  out  another, 
like  light  through  tinted  glass.  It  is  rather  amusing,  by 
the  way,  when  a  friend  comes  and  tells  you  a  story  which 


60  CONCERNING  THE 

he  heard  from  yourself,  but  so  put  that  you  hardly  know 
it  again.  Unscrupulous  putters  of  things  should  have 
good  memories.  There  is  no  reckoning  the  ways  in 
which,  by  varying  the  turn  of  an  expression,  by  a  tone 
or  look,  an  entirely  false  view  may  be  given  of  a  conver- 
sation, a  transaction,  or  an  event.  A  lady  says  to  her 
cook,  You  are  by  no  means  overworked.  The  cook  com- 
plains in  the  servants'  hall  that  her  mistress  said  she  had 
nothing  to  do.  Lies,  in  the  sense  of  pure  inventions,  are 
not  common,  I  believe,  among  people  with  any  claim  to 
respectability ;  but  it  is  perfectly  awful  to  think  how 
great  a  part  of  ordinary  conversation,  especially  in  little 
country  towns,  consists  in  putting  things  quite  differently 
from  the  actual  fact ;  in  short,  of  wilful  misrepresentation. 
Many  people  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  deepen  the 
colours,  and  strengthen  the  lines,  of  any  narration,  in  order 
to  make  it  more  telling.  Unluckily,  things  usually  occur 
in  life  in  such  a  manner  as  just  to  miss  what  would  give 
them  a  point  and  make  a  good  story  of  them  ;  and  the 
temptation  is  strong  to  make  them,  by  the  deflection  of  a 
hair's  breadth,  what  they  ought  to  have  been. 

It  is  sad  to  think,  that  in  ninety-nine  out  of  eveiy  hun- 
dred cases  in  which  tilings  are  thus  untruly  put,  the  rep- 
resentation is  made  worse  than  the  reality.  Few  old 
ladies  endeavour,  by  their  imaginative  putting  of  things, 
to  exhibit  their  acquaintances  as  wiser,  better,  and  more 
amiable,  than  the  fact.  An  exception  may  be  made  when- 
ever putting  her  friends  and  their  affairs  in  a  dignified 
light  would  reflect  credit  upon  the  old  lady  herself.  Then, 
indeed,  their  income  i>  vast,  their  house  is  magnificent, 
their  hor.-es  are  Eclipses,  their  conversation  is  brilliant, 
their  attention  to  their  friends  unwearying  and  indescrib- 
able.    Alas  for  our  race:  that  we  lean  to  evil  rather  than 


ART    OF  PUTTING  THINGS.  61 

to  good,  and  that  it  is  so  much  more  easy  and  piquant  to 
pitch  into  a  man  than  to  praise  him  ! 

Let  us  rejoice  that  there  is  one  happy  case  in  which 
the  way  of  putting  things,  though  often  false,  is  always 
favourable.  I  mean  the  accounts  which  are  given  in 
country  newspapers  of  the  character  and  the  doings 
the  great  men  of  the  district.  I  often  admire  the  country 
editor's  skill  in  putting  all  things  (save  the  speech  of  the 
opposition  M.P.,  as  already  mentioned)  in  such  a  rosy 
light ;  nor  do  I  admire  his  genial  bonhomie  less  than  his 
art.  If  a  marquis  makes  a  stammering  speech,  it  is  sure 
to  be  put  as  most  interesting  and  eloquent.  If  the  rec- 
tor preaches  a  dull  and  stupid  charity  sermon,  it  is  put 
as  striking  and  effective.  A  public  meeting,  consisting 
chiefly  of  empty  benches,  is  put  as  most  respectably 
attended.  A  gift  of  a  little  flannel  and  coals  at  Christ- 
mas-time, is  put  as  seasonable  munificence.  A  bald  and 
seedy  building,  just  erected  in  the  High-street,  is  put  as 
chaste  and  classical ;  an  extravagant  display  of  ginger- 
bread decoration  is  put  as  gorgeous  and  magnificent.  In 
brief,  what  other  men  heartily  wish  this  world  were,  the 
conductors  of  local  prints  boldly  declare  that  it  is. 
Whatever  they  think  a  great  man  would  like  to  be 
called,  that  they  make  haste  to  call  him.  Happy  fellows, 
if  they  really  believe  that  they  live  in  such  a  world  and 
among  such  beings  as  they  put  !  Their  gushing  heart 
is  too  much  for  even  their  sharp  head,  and  they  see  all 
things  glorified  by  the  sunshine  of  their  own  exceeding 
amiability. 

The  subject  greate.ns  on  me,  but  the  paper  dwindles : 
the  five-and-fbrty  fair  expanses  of  foolscap  are  darkened 
at  last.  It  would  need  a  volume,  not  an  essay,  to  do  this 
matter  justice.     Sir    Bulwer    Lytton   has    declared,    in 


62  THE   ART   OF   PUTTING  THINGS. 

pages  charming  but  too  many,  that  the  world's  great 
question  is,  What  will  he  do  with  It?  I  shall  not 
debate  the  point,  but  simply  add,  that  only  second  to  that 
question  in  comprehensive  reach  and  in  practical  impor- 
tance is  the  question HOAV   WT1LL   HE   PUT   It  ? 


CHAPTER   III. 
CONCERNING    TWO    BLISTERS    OF    HUMANITY: 

BEING  THOUGHTS  ON  PETTY  MALIGNITY  AND 
PETTY  TRICKERY. 

T  is  highly  improbable  that  any  reader  of 
ordinary  power  of  imagination,  would  guess 
the  particular  surface  on  which  the  paper 
is  spread  whereon  I  am  at  the  present 
moment  writing.  Such  is  the  reflection  which  flows 
naturally  from  my  pencil's  point  as  it  begins  to  darken 
this  page.  I  am  seated  on  a  manger,  in  a  very  light 
and  snug  stable,  and  my  paper  is  spread  upon  a  horse's 
face,  occupying  the  flat  part  between  the  eyes.  You 
would  not  think,  unless  you  tried,  what  an  extensive 
superficies  may  there  be  found.  If  you  put  a  thin  book 
next  the  horse's  skin,  you  will  write  with  the  greater 
facility:  and  you  will  find,  as  you  sit  upon  the  edge  of 
the  manger,  that  the  animal's  head  occupies  a  position 
which,  as  regards  height  and  slope,  is  sufficiently  con- 
venient. His  mouth,  it  may  be  remarked,  is  not  far 
from  your  knees,  so  that  it  would  be  highly  inexpedient 
to  attempt  the  operation  with  a  vicious,  biting  brute,  or 
indeed  with  any  horse  of  whose  temper  you  are  not  well 
assured.  But  you,  my  good  Old  Boy  (for  such  is  the 
quadruped's  name),  you  would  not  bite  your  master. 
Too  many  carrots  have  you  received  from  his  hand ;  too 


64  CONCERNING  TWO 

many  pieces  of  bread  have  you  licked  up  from  bis 
extended  palm.  A  thought  bas  struck  me  which  I  wish 
to  preserve  in  writing,  though  indeed  at  this  rate  it  will 
be  a  long  time  before  I  work  my  way  to  it.  I  am  wait- 
ing here  for  five  minutes  till  my  man-servant  shall  return 
with  something  for  which  be  has  been  sent,  and  where- 
fore should  even  five  minutes  be  wasted  ?  Life  is  not 
very  long,  and  the  minutes  in  which  one  can  write  with 
ease  are  not  very  many.  And  perhaps  the  newness  of 
such  a  place  of  writing  may  communicate  something  of 
freshness  to  what  is  traced  by  a  somewhat  jaded  hand. 
You  winced  a  little,  Old  Boy,  as  I  disposed  my  book 
and  this  scrap  of  an  old  letter  on  your  face,  but  now  you 
stand  perfectly  still.  On  either  side  of  this  page  I  see  a 
large  eye  looking  down  wistfully ;  above  the  page  a  pair 
of  ears  are  cocked  in  quiet  curiosity,  but  with  no  indica- 
tion of  fear.  Not  that  you  are  deficient  in  spirit,  my 
dumb  friend ;  you  will  do  your  twelve  miles  an  hour 
with  any  steed  within  some  miles  of  you ;  but  a  long 
course  of  kindness  has  gentled  you  as  well  as  Mr.  Rarey 
could  have  done,  though  no  more  than  seven  summers 
have  passed  over  your  head.  Let  us  ever,  kindly  reader, 
look  with  especial  sympathy  and  regard  at  any  inferior 
animal  on  which  the  doom  of  man  has  fallen,  and  which 
must  eat  its  food,  if  not  in  the  sweat  of  its  brow,  then  in 
that  of  its  sides.  Curious,  that  a  creature  should  be 
called  all  through  life  to  labour,  for  which  yet  there 
remains  no  rest !  As  for  us  human  beings,  we  can  under- 
stand and  we  can  bear  with  much  evil,  and  many  trials 
and  sorrows  here,  because  we  are  taught  that  all  these 
form  the  discipline  which  shall  prepare  us  for  another 
world,  a  world  that  shall  set  this  right.  But  for  you,  my 
poor  fellow-creature,  I  think  with  sorrow  as  I  write  here 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  65 

upon  your  head,  there  remains  no  such  immortality  as 
remains  for  me.  "What  a  difference  between  us  !  You 
to  your  sixteen  or  eighteen  years  here,  and  then  oblivion. 
I  to  my  threescore  and  ten,  and  then  eternity !  Yes,  the 
difference  is  immense  ;  and  it  touches  me  to  think  of  your 
life  and  mine,  of  your  doom  and  mine.  I  know  a  house 
where,  at  morning  and  evening  prayer,  when  the  house- 
hold assembles,  among  the  servants  there  always  walks 
in  a  certain  shaggy  little  dog,  who  listens  with  the 
deepest  attention  and  the  most  solemn  gravity  to  all  that 
is  said,  and  then,  when  prayers  are  over,  goes  out  again 
with  his  friends.  I  cannot  witness  that  silent  procedure 
without  being  much  moved  by  the  sight.  Ah,  my  fel- 
low-creature, this  is  something  in  which  you  have  no 
part !  Made  by  the  same  Hand,  breathing  the  same  air, 
sustained  like  us  by  food  and  drink,  you  are  witnessing 
an  act  of  ours  which  relates  to  interests  that  do  not  con- 
cern you,  and  of  which  you  have  no  idea.  And  so,  here 
we  are,  you  standing  at  the  manger,  Old  Boy,  and  I 
sitting  upon  it ;  the  mortal  and  the  immortal ;  close 
together;  your  nose  on  my  knee,  my  paper  on  your 
head  ;  yet  with  something  between  us  broader  than  the 
broad  Atlantic.  As  for  you,  if  you  suffer  here,  there  is 
no  other  life  to  make  up  for  it.  Yet  it  would  be  well  if 
many  of  those  who  are  your  betters  in  the  scale  of  crea- 
tion, fulfilled  their  Creator's  purposes  as  well  as  you. 
He  gave  you  strength  and  swiftness,  and  you  use  these 
to  many  a  valuable  end :  not  many  of  the  superior  race 
will  venture  to  say  that  they  turn  the  powers  God  gave 
them  to  account  as  worthy  of  their  nature.  If  it  come 
to  the  question  of  deserving,  you  deserve  better  than  me. 
Forgive  me,  my  fellow-creature,  if  I  have  sometimes 
given  you  an  angry  flick,  when  you  shied  a  little  at  a 


66  CONCERNING  TWO 

pig  or  a  donke}\  But  I  know  you  bear  me  no  malice ; 
you  forget  the  flicks  (they  are  not  many),  and  you  think 
rather  of  the  bread  and  the  carrots,  of  the  times  I  have 
pulled  your  ears,  and  smoothed  your  neck,  and  patted 
your  nose.  And  forasmuch  as  this  is  all  your  life,  I 
shall  do  my  very  best  to  make  it  a  comfortable  one. 
Happiness,  of  course,  is  something  which  you  can  never 
know.  Yet,  my  friend  and  companion  through  many 
weary  miles,  you  shall  have  a  deep-littered  stall,  and 
store  of  corn  and  hay  so  long  as  I  can  give  them ;  and 
may  this  hand  never  write  another  line  if  it  ever  does 
you  wilful  injury  ! 

Into  this  paragraph  has  my  pencil  of  its  own  accord 
rambled,  though  it  was  taken  up  to  write  about  some- 
thing else.  And  such  is  the  happiness  of  the  writer  of 
essays:  he  may  wander  about  the  world  of  thought  at 
his  will.  The  style  of  the  essayist  has  attained  what 
may  be  esteemed  the  perfection  of  freedom,  when  it  per- 
mits him,  in  writing  upon  any  subject  whatsoever,  to  say 
whatever  may  occur  to  him  upon  any  other  subject. 
And  truly  it  is  a  pleasing  thing  for  one  long  trammelled 
by  the  requirements  of  a  rigorous  logic,  and  fettered  by 
thoughts  of  symmetry,  connexion,  and  neatness  in  the 
discussion  of  his  topic,  to  enter  upon  a  fresh  field  where 
all  these  things  go  for  nothing,  and  to  write  for  readers 
many  of  whom  would  never  notice  such  characteristics 
if  they  were  present,  nor  ever  miss  them  if  they  were 
absent.  There  is  all  the  difference  between  plodding 
wearily  along  the  dusty  highway,  and  rambling  through 
green  fields,  and  over  country  stiles,  leisurely,  saunter- 
ingly,  going  nowhere  in  particular.  You  would  not  wish 
to  be  always  desultory  and  rambling,  but  it  is  pleasant  to 
be  so  now  and  then.     And  there  is  a  delightful  freedom 


BLISTEES   OF  HUMANITY.  67 

about  the  feeling  that  you  are  producing  an  entirely 
unsymrnetrical  composition.  It  is  fearful  work,  if  you 
have  a  thousand  thoughts  and  shades  of  thought  about 
any  subject,  to  get  them  all  arranged  in  what  a  logician 
would  call  their  proper  places.  It  is  like  having  a  dis- 
sected puzzle  of  a  thousand  pieces  given  you  in  confusion, 
and  being  required  to  lit  all  the  little  pieces  of  ivory  into 
their  box  again.  By  most  men  this  work  of  orderly  and 
symmetrical  composition  can  be  done  well  only  by  its 
being  done  comparatively  slowly.  In  the  case  of  ordi- 
nary folk  the  mind  is  a  machine,  which  may  indeed,  by 
putting  on  extra  pressure,  be  worked  faster;  but  the 
result  is  the  deterioration  of  the  material  which  it  turns 
off.  It  is  an  extraordinary  gift  of  nature  and  training, 
when  a  man  is  like  Follett,  who,  after  getting  the  facts 
of  an  involved  and  intricate  case  into  his  mind  only  at 
one  or  two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  could  appear  in  Court 
at  nine  a.m.,  and  there  proceed  to  state  the  case  and  all 
his  reasonings  upon  it,  with  the  very  perfection  of  logical 
method,  every  thought  in  its  proper  place,  and  all  this  at 
the  rate  of  rapid  extempore  speaking.  The  difference 
between  the  rate  of  writing  and  that  of  speaking,  with 
most  men,  makes  the  difference  between  producing  good 
material  and  bad.  A  great  many  minds  can  turn  off  a  fair 
manufacture  at  the  rate  of  writing,  which,  when  over- 
driven to  keep  pace  with  speaking,  will  bring  forth  very 
poor  stuff  indeed.  And  besides  this,  most  people  cannot 
grasp  a  large  subject  in  all  its  extent  and  its  bearings, 
and  get  their  thoughts  upon  it  marshalled  and  sorted, 
unless  they  have  at  least  two  or  three  days  to  do  so.  At 
first  all  is  confusion  and  indefiniteness,  but  gradually 
things  settle  into  order.  Hardly  any  mind,  by  any  effort, 
can  get   them  into  order  quickly.     If  at  all,  it  is  by  a 


68  CONCERNING  TWO 

tremendous  exertion ;  whereas  the  mind  has  a  curious 
power,  without  any  perceptible  effort,  of  arranging  in 
order  thoughts  upon  any  subject,  if  you  give  it  time. 
Who  that  has  ever  written  his  ideas  on  some  involved 
point  but  knows  this  ?  You  begin  by  getting  up  infor- 
mation on  the  subject  about  which  you  are  to  write. 
You  throw  into  the  mind,  as  it  were,  a  great  heap  of 
crude,  unordered  material.  From  this  book  and  that 
book,  from  this  review  and  that  newspaper,  you  collect 
the  observations  of  men  who  have  regarded  your  subject 
from  quite  different  points  of  view,  and  for  quite  different 
purposes ;  you  throw  into  the  mind  cartload  after  cart- 
load of  facts  and  opinions,  with  a  despairing  wonder  how 
you  will  ever  be  able  to  get  that  huge,  contradictory, 
vague  mass  into  anything  like  shape  and  order.  And 
if,  the  minute  you  had  all  your  matter  accumulated,  you 
were  called  on  to  state  what  you  knew  or  thought  upon 
the  subject,  you  could  not  do  so  for  your  life  in  any 
satisfactory  manner.  You  would  not  know  where  to 
begin,  or  how  to  go  on ;  it  would  be  all  confusion  and 
bewilderment.  Well,  do  not  make  the  slightest  effort. 
What  is  impossible  now  will  be  quite  easy  by  and  bye. 
The  peas,  which  cost  a  sovereign  a  pint  at  Christmas, 
are  quite  cheap  in  their  proper  season.  Go  about  other 
things  for  three  or  four  days:  and  at  the  end  of  that 
time  you  will  be  aware  that  the  machinery  of  your  mind, 
voluntarily  and  almost  unconsciously  playing,  has  sorted 
and  arranged  that  mass  of  matter  which  you  threw  into 
it.  Where  all  was  confusion  and  uncertainty,  all  is  now 
order  and  clearness  ;  and  you  see  exactly  where  to  begin. 
and  what  to  say  next,  and  where  and  how  to  leave  off. 

The  probability  is,  that  all  this  has  not  been  done  with- 
out an  effort,  and  a  considerable  amount  of  labour.     But 


BLISTERS    OF   HUMANITY.  69 

then,  instead  of  the  labour  having  been  all  at  once,  it  has 
been  very  much  subdivided.  The  subject  was  simmering 
in  your  mind  all  the  while,  though  you  were  hardly  aware 
of  it.  Time  after  time,  you  took  a  little  run  at  it,  and 
saw  your  way  a  little  farther  through  it.  But  this  multi- 
tude of  little  separate  and  momentary  efforts  does  not 
count  for  much  ;  though  in  reality,  if  they  were  all  put 
together,  they  would  probably  be  found  to  have  amounted 
to  as  much  as  the  prolonged  exertion  which  would  at  a 
single  heat  have  attained  the  end.  A  large  result,  at- 
tained by  innumerable  little,  detached  efforts,  seems  as  if 
it  had  been  attained  without  any  effort  at  all. 

I  love  a  pai-allel  case ;  and  I  must  take  such  cases  from 
my  ordinary  experience.  Yesterday,  passing  a  little  cot- 
tage by  the  wayside,  I  perceived  at  the  door  the  carcase 
of  a  very  large  pig  extended  on  a  table.  Approaching, 
as  is  my  wont,  the  tenant  of  the  cottage  and  owner  of  the 
pi°\  I  be^an  to  converse  with  him  on  the  size  and  fatness 
of  the  poor  creature  which  had  that  morning  quitted  its 
sty  for  ever.  It  had  been  shot,  he  told  me  ;  for  such,  in 
these  parts,  is  at  present  the  most  approved  way  of  secur- 
ing for  swine  an  end  as  little  painful  as  may  be.  I  ad- 
mired the  humanity  of  the  intention,  and  hoped  that  it 
might  be  crowned  with  success.  Then  my  friend,  the  pro- 
prietor of  the  bacon,  began  to  discourse  on  the  philosophy 
of  the  rearing  of  pigs  by  labouring  men.  No  doubt,  he 
said,  the  four  pounds,  or  thereabout,  which  he  would  get 
for  his  pig,  would  be  a  great  help  to  a  hard-working  man 
with  five  or  six  little  children.  But  after  all,  he  re- 
marked, it  was  likely  enough  that  during  the  months 
of  the  pig's  life,  it  had  bit  by  bit  consumed  and  cost  him 
as  much  as  he  would  get  for  it  now.  But  then,  he  went 
on,  it  cost  us  that  in  little  sums  we  hardly  felt ;  while  the 


70  CONCERNING  TWO 

four  pounds  it  will  sell  for  come  all  in  a  lump,  and  seem  to 
give  a  very  perceptible  profit.  Successive  unfelt  sixpences 
had  mounted  up  to  that  considerable  sum  ;  even  as  five 
hundred  little  unfelt  mental  efforts  had  mounted  up  to  the 
large  result  of  sorting  and  methodizing  the  mass  of  crude 
fact  and  opinion  of  which  we  were  thinking  a  little  while 
ago. 

Having  worked  through  this  preliminary  matter 
(which  will  probably  be  quite  enough  for  some  readers, 
even  as  the  Solan  goose  which  does  but  whet  the  appetite 
of  the  Highlander,  annihilates  that  of  the  Sassenach),  I 
now  come  to  the  subject  which  was  in  my  mind  when  I 
began  to  write  on  the  horse's  head.  I  am  not  in  the  sta- 
ble now ;  for  the  business  which  detained  me  there  is  long 
since  despatched :  and  after  all,  it  is  more  convenient  to 
write  at  one's  study-table.  I  wish  to  say  something  con- 
cerning certain  evils  which  press  upon  humanity ;  and 
which  are  to  the  feeling  of  the  mind  very  much  what  a 
mustard-blister  is  to  the  feeling  of  the  body.  To  the 
healthy  man  or  woman  they  probably  do  not  do  much  se- 
rious harm ;  but  they  maintain  a  very  constant  irritation. 
They  worry  and  annoy.  It  is  extremely  interesting,  in 
reading  the  published  diaries  of  several  great  and  good 
men,  to  find  them  recording  on  how  many  days  they 
were  put  out  of  sorts,  vexed  and  irritated,  and  rendered 
unfit  for  their  work  of  writing,  by  some  piece  of  petty 
malignity  or  petty  trickery.  How  well  one  can  sympa- 
thize with  that  good  and  great,  and  honest  and  amiable 
and  sterling  man,  Dr.  Chalmers,  when  we  find  him  re- 
cording in  his  diary,  when  he  was  a  country  parish  min- 
ister, how  he  was  unable  to  make  satisfactory  progress 
with  his  sermon  one  whole  forenoon,  because  some  tricky 
and  over-reaching  farmer  in  the  neighbourhood  drove  two 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  71 

calves  into  a  field  of  his  glebe,  where  the  great  man 
found  them  in  Me  morning  devouring  his  fine  young 
clover !  There  was  something  very  irritating  and  annoy- 
ing in  the  paltry  dishonesty.  And  the  sensitive  machin- 
ery of  the  good  man's  mind  could  not  work  sweetly  when 
the  gritty  grains  of  the  small  vexation  were  fretting  its 
polished  surface.  Let  it  be  remarked  in  passing,  that  the 
peculiar  petty  dishonesty  of  driving  cattle  into  a  neigh- 
bouring proprietor's  field,  is  far  from  being  an  uncommon 
one.  And  let  me  inform  such  as  have  suffered  from  it 
of  a  remedy  against  it  which  has  never  been  known  to 
fail.  If  the  trespassing  animals  be  cows,  wait  till  the 
afternoon  :  then  have  them  well  milked,  and  send  them 
home.  If  horses,  let  them  instantly  be  put  in  carts,  and 
sent  off  ten  miles  to  fetch  lime.  A  sudden  strength  will 
thenceforward  invest  your  fences ;  and  from  having  been 
so  open  that  no  efforts  on  the  part  of  your  neighbours 
could  keep  their  cattle  from  straying  into  your  fields,  you 
will  find  them  all  at  once  become  wholly  impervious. 

But,  to  return,  I  maintain  that  these  continual  blisters, 
of  petty  trickery  and  petty  malignity,  produce  a  very 
vexatious  effect.  You  are  quite  put  about  at  finding  out 
one  of  your  servants  in  some  petty  piece  of  dishonesty 
or  deception.  You  are  decidedly  worried  if  you  happen 
to  be  sitting  in  a  cottage  where  your  coachman  does  not 
know  that  you  are  ;  and  if  you  discern  from  the  window 
that  functionary,  who  never  exercises  your  horses  in  your 
presence  save  at  a  walk,  galloping  them  furiously  over 
the  hard  stones ;  shaking  their  legs  and  endangering 
their  wind.  It  is  annoying  to  find  your  haymakers 
working  desperately  hard  and  fast  when  you  appear  in 
the  field,  not  aware  that  from  amid  a  little  clump  of  wood 
you  had  discerned  them  a  minute  before  reposing  quietly 


72  COXCEKNIXG  TWO 

upon  the  fragrant  heaps,  and  possibly  that  you  had  over- 
heard them  saying  that  they  need  not  w\;rk  very  hard,  as 
they  were  working  for  a  gentleman.    You  would  not  have 
been  displeased  had  you  found  them  honestly  resting  on 
the  sultry  day  :  but  you  are  annoyed  by  the  small  attempt 
to  deceive  you.     Such  pieces  of  petty  trickery  put  you 
more  out  of  sorts  than  you  would  like  to  acknowledge  :  and 
you  are  likewise  ashamed  to  discover  that  you  mind  so 
much  as  you  do,  when  some   goodnatured   friend  comes 
and  informs  you  how  Mr.  Snarling  has  been  misrepre- 
senting something  you   have   said    or  done ;    and    Miss 
Limejuice  has  been  telling  lies  to  your  prejudice.     You 
are  a  clergyman,  perhaps  ;  and  you  said  in  your  sermon 
last  Sunday  that,  strong  Protestant  as  you  are,  you  be- 
lieved   that    many  good    people    may  be    found    in    the 
Church  of  Rome.     Well,  ever  since  then,  Miss  Limejuice 
has  not  ceased  to  rush  about   the   parish,  exclaiming  in 
every  house  she  entered,  '  Is  not  this  awful  ?     Here,  on 
Sunday  morning,  the  rector  said    that  we   ought   all   to 
become  Roman   Catholics  !     One  comfort  is,  the  Bishop 
is  to  have  him  up  directly.     I  was  always  sure  that  he 
was  a  Jesuit  in  disguise.'     Or  you  are  a  country  gentle- 
man :  and  at  an  election-time  you  told  one  of  your  tenants 
that  such   a   candidate   was  your  friend,   and    that  you 
would  lie  happy  if  he  could  conscientiously  vote  for  him, 
but  that  he  was  to  do  just  what  he  thought  right.     Ever 
since,  Mr.  Snarling  has  been  spreading  a  report  that  you 
went,  drunk,  into  your   tenant's   house,  that  you  thrust 
your  fist   in   his  face,  that  you  took   him  by  the  collar 
and  shook  him.  that  you  told  him  that,  if  he  did  not  vote 
for  your  friend,  you  would  turn  him  out  of  your  farm, 
and  send  lii>  wife  and  children  to  the  workhouse.      For 
in  such  playful  exaggerations  do  people  in  small  comniu- 


BLISTERS    OF    HUMANITY.  73 

nities  not  unfrequently  indulge.  Now  you  are  vexed 
when  you  hear  of  such  pieces  of  petty  malignity.  They 
don't  do  you  much  harm ;  for  most  people  whose  opin- 
ion you  value,  know  how  much  weight  to  attach  to  any 
statement  of  Miss  Limejuice  and  Mr.  Snarling ;  and  if 
you  try  to  do  your  duty  day  by  day  where  God  has  put 
you,  and  to  live  an  honest,  christian  life,  it  will  go  hard  but 
you  will  live  down  such  malicious  vilification.  But  these 
things  worry.  They  act  as  blisters,  in  short,  without  the 
medicinal  value  of  blisters.  And  little  contemptible  wor- 
ries do  a  great  deal  to  detract  from  the  enjoyment  of  life. 
To  meet  great  misfortunes  we  gather  up  our  endurance, 
and  pray  for  Divine  support  and  guidance ;  but  as  for 
small  blisters,  the  insect  cares  (as  James  Montgomery 
called  them)  of  daily  life,  we  are  very  ready  to  think 
that  they  are  too  little  to  trouble  the  Almighty  with  them, 
or  even  to  call  up  our  fortitude  to  face  them.  This  is  not 
a  sermon  ;  but  let  it  be  said  that  whosoever  would  learn 
how  rightly  to  meet  the  perpetually-recurring  worries  of 
workday  existence,  should  read  an  admirable  little  trea- 
tise by  Mrs.  Stowe,  the  authoress  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabini 
entitled  Earthly  Care  a  Heavenly  Discipline.  The  price 
of  the  work  is  one  penny,  but  it  contains  advice  which  is 
worth  an  uncounted  number  of  pence.  Nor,  as  I  think, 
are  there  to  be  found  many  more  corroding  and  vexa- 
tious agencies  than  those  which  have  been  already  named. 
To  know  that  your  servants,  or  your  humbler  neigh- 
bours, or  your  tradespeople,  or  your  tenantry,  or  your 
scholars,  are  practising  upon  you  a  system  of  petty  de- 
ception ;  or  to  be  informed  (as  you  are  quite  sure  to  be 
informed)  how  such  and  such  a  mischievous  (or  perhaps 
only  thoughtless)  acquaintance  is  putting  words  into  your 
mouth  which  you  never  uttered,  or  abusing  your  wife  and 


74  CONCERNING    TWO 

children,  or  floating  over  your  failure  to  get  into  parlia- 
ment, or  the  lameness  of  your  horses,  or  the  speech  you 
stuck  in  at  the  recent  public  dinner ;  —  all  these  things 
are  pettily  vexatious  to  many  men.  No  doubt,  over-sen- 
sitiveness is  abundantly  foolish.  Some  folk  appear  not 
merely  to  be  thinskinned,  but  to  have  been  (morally) 
deprived  of  any  skin  at  all  ;  and  such  folk  punish  them- 
selves severely  enough  for  their  folly.  They  wince  when 
any  one  comes  near  them.  The  Pope  may  go  wrong, 
but  they  cannot.  It  is  treasonable,  it  is  inexpiable  sin, 
to  hint  that,  in  judgment,  in  taste,  in  conduct,  it  is  possible 
for  them  to  deviate  by  a  hair's-breadth  from  the  right 
line  of  perfection.  Indeed,  I  believe  that  no  immorality, 
no  criminality,  would  excite  such  wrath  in  some  men,  as 
to  tread  upon  a  corner  of  their  self-conceit.  Yet  it  is 
curious  how  little  sympathy  these  over-sensitive  people 
have  for  the  sensitiveness  of  other  people.  You  would 
say  they  fancied  that  the  skin  of  which  they  have  been 
denuded  has  been  applied  to  thicken  to  rhinoceros  cal- 
lousness the  moral  hide  of  other  men.  They  speak  their 
mind  freely  to  their  acquaintances  of  their  acquaint- 
ances' belongings.  They  will  tell  an  acquaintance  (they 
have  no  friends,  so  I  must  repeat  the  word)  that  he  made 
a  very  absurd  speech,  that  she  sung  very  badly,  that  the 
situation  of  his  house  (which  he  cannot  leave)  is  abomi- 
nably dull,  that  his  wife  is  foolish  and  devoid  of  accom- 
plishments,  that  her  husband  is  a  man  of  mediocre  abili- 
ties, that  her  little  boy  has  red  hair  and  a  squint,  that 
the  potatoes  he  rears  are  abominably  bad,  that  lie  is  get- 
ting unwieldily  stout,  that  his  riding-horse  has  no  hair  on 
his  tail.  All  these  things,  and  a  hundred  more,  such 
people  say  with  that  mixture  of  dulness  of  perception 
and  small  malignity  of  nature  which  go  to  make  what  is 


BLISTERS    OF    HUMANITY.  75 

vulgarly  called  a  person  who  '  speaks  his  mind.'  The 
right  way  to  meet  such  folk  is  by  an  instant  reciprocal 
action.  Just  begin  to  speak  your  mind  to  them,  and  see 
how  they  look.  Tell  them,  with  calm  politeness,  that 
before  expressing  their  opinion  so  confidently,  they 
should  have  considered  what  their  opinion  was  worth. 
Tell  them  that  civility  requires  that  you  should  listen  to 
their  opinion,  but  that  they  may  be  assured  that  you  will 
act  upon  your  own.  Tell  them  what  you  think  of  their 
spelling,  their  punctuation,  their  features,  their  house, 
their  carpets,  their  window-curtains,  their  general  stand- 
ing as  members  of  the  human  race.  How  blue  they  will 
look !  They  are  quite  taken  aback  when  the  same  petty 
malignity  and  insolence  which  they  have  been  accus- 
tomed for  years  to  carry  into  their  neighbours'  territory 
is  suddenly  directed  against  their  own.  And  you  will 
find  that  not  only  are  they  themselves  skinlessly  sensi- 
tive, but  that  their  sensitiveness  is  not  bounded  by  their 
own  mental  and  corporeal  being  ;  and  that  it  extends  to  the 
extreme  limits  of  their  horses'  legs,  to  the  very  top  of  their 
chimney-pots,  to  every  member  of  the  profession  which 
was  honored  by  the  choice  of  their  great-grandfather. 

You  have  observed,  no  doubt,  that  the  mention  of  over- 
sensitive people  acted  upon  the  writer's  train  of  thought 
as  a  pair  of  points  in  the  rails  act  upon  a  railway  train. 
It  shunted  me  off  the  main  line ;  and  in  these  remarks 
on  people  who  talk  their  mind,  I  have  been,  so  to  speak, 
running  along  a  siding.  To  go  back  to  the  point  where 
I  left  the  line,  I  observe,  that  although  it  is  very  foolish  to 
mind  much  about  such  small  matters  as  being  a  little 
cheated  day  by  day,  and  a  good  deal  misrepresented  now 
and  then  by  amiable  acquaintances,  still  it  is  the  fact  that 
even  upon  people  of  a  healthful  temperament  such  things 


76  CONCERNING  TWO 

act  as  moral  blisters,  as  moral  pebbles  in  one's  boots. 
The  petty  malignity  which  occasionally  annoys  you  is 
generally  to  be  found  among  your  acquaintances,  and 
people  of  the  same  standing  with  yourself;  while  the 
petty  trickery  for  the  most  part  exists  in  the  case  of  your 
inferiors.  I  think  one  always  feels  the  better  for  looking 
any  small  evil  of  life  straight  in  the  face.  To  define  a 
thin"',  to  fix  its  precise  dimensions,  almost  invariably 
makes  it  look  a  good  deal  smaller.  Indefiniteness  much 
increases  apparent  size ;  so  let  us  now  examine  the  size 
and  the  operation  of  these  blisters  of  humanity. 

As  for  petty  malignity,  my  reader,  have  you  not  seen 
a  great  deal  of  it  ?  There  are  not  many  men  who  appear 
to  love  their  neighbours  as  themselves.  No  one  enjoys  a 
misfortune  or  disappointment  which  befals  himself:  but 
there  is  too  much  truth  in  the  smart  Frenchman's  saying, 
that  there  is  something  not  entirely  disagreeable  to  us  in 
the  misfortunes  of  even  our  very  best  friends.  The 
malignity,  indeed,  is  petty.  It  is  only  in  small  matters. 
And  it  is  rather  in  feeling  than  in  action.  Even  that  sour 
Miss  Limejuice,  though  she  would  be  very  glad  if  your 
horse  fell  lame  or  your  carriage  upset,  would  not  see  you 
drowning  without  doing  her  very  best  to  save  you.  Ah, 
poor  thing  !  she  is  not  so  bad,  after  all.  This  has  been  to 
her  but  a  bitter  world  ;  and  no  wonder  if  she  is,  on  the 
surface,  a  little  embittered  by  it.  But  when  you  get 
fairly  through  the  surface  of  her  nature,  as  real  misfor- 
tunes and  trials  do,  there  is  kindliness  about  that  withered 
heart  yet.  She  would  laugh  at  you  if  you  broke  down  in 
your  speech  on  the  hustings  ;  but  she  would  throw  herself 
in  the  path  of  a  pair  of  furious  runaway  horses,  to  save  a 
little  child  from  their  trampling  feet.     I   do  not  believe 


BLISTERS    OF   HUMANITY.  7/ 

that  among  ordinary  people,  even  in  a  gossiping   little 
country  town,  there  is  much  real  and  serious  malice  in 
this  world.     I  cling  to  that  belief ;  for  if  many  men  were 
truly  as  mischievous  as  you  would  sometimes  think  when 
you  hear  them  talk,  one  might  turn  misanthrope  and  her- 
mit at  once.     There  is  hardly  a  person  you    know  who 
would  do  you  any  material  injury ;  not  one  who  would 
cut  down  your  roses,  or  splash  your  entrance-gate  with 
mud  :  not  one  who  would  not  gladly  do  you  a  kind  turn  if 
it  lay  within  his  power.     Yet  there  are  a  good  many  who 
would  with  satisfaction  repeat  any  story  which  might  be  a 
little  to  your  disadvantage  ;  which  might  tend    to  prove 
that  you  are  rather  silly,  rather  conceited,  rather  ill-in- 
formed.    You  have  various  friends  who  would  not  object 
to  show  up  any  ridiculous  mistake  you  might  happen  to 
make  ;  who  would  never  forget  the  occasion  on  which  it 
appeared  that  you  had  never  heard  of  the   Spectator  or 
Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  or  that  you  thought  that  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  was   the  mother  of  George  III.     You 
have  various  friends  who  would  preserve  the    remem- 
brance of  the  day  on  which  the  rector  rebuked  you  for 
talking  in  church  ;  or  on  which  your  partner  and  yourself 
fell  flat  on  the  floor  of  the  ball-room  at  the  county  town 
of  Oatmealshire,  in  the  midst  of  a  galop.      You   have 
various  goodnatured  friends  to  whom  it  would  be  a  positive 
enjoyment  to  come  and  tell  you   what  a  very  unfavour- 
able opinion  Mr.  A  and  Mrs.  B  and  Miss  C  had  been 
expressing  of  your  talents,  character,  and  general  con- 
duct.    How  true  was  the  remark  of  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary, 
that  it  is  quite   unnecessary  for  any  man  to  take  pains  to 
learn  anything  bad  that  has  been   said  about  him,  inas- 
much as  it  is  quite  sure  to  be  told  him  by  some  good- 
natux-ed  friend  or  other  !    You  have  various  acquaintances 


78  CONCERNING   TWO 

who  will  be  very  much  gratified  when  a  rainy  day  spoils 
the  pic-nic  to  which  you  have  invited  a  large  party  ;  and 
who  will  be  perfectly  enraptured,  if  you  have  hired  a 
steamboat  for  the  occasion,  and  if  the  day  proves  so 
stormy  that  every  soul  on  board  is  deadly  sick.  And 
indeed  it  is  satisfactory  to  think  that  in  our  uncertain 
climate,  where  so  many  festal  days  are  marred  as  to  their 
enjoyment  by  drenching  showers,  there  is  compensation 
for  the  sufferings  of  the  people  who  are  ducked,  in  the 
enjoyment  which  that  fact  affords  to  very  many  of  their 
friends.  By  taking  a  larger  viewr  of  things,  you  discover 
that  there  is  good  in  everything.  You  were  Senior 
Wrangler:  you  just  miss  being  made  a  Bishop  at  forty- 
two.  No  doubt  that  was  a  great  disappointment  to  your- 
self; but  think  what  a  joy  it  was  to  some  scores  of 
fellows  whom  you  beat  at  College,  and  who  hate  you 
accordingly.  Some  months  ago  a  proprietor  in  this 
county  was  raised  to  the  peerage.  His  tenantry  were 
entertained  at  a  public  dinner  in  honour  of  the  event. 
The  dinner  was  held  in  a  large  canvas  pavilion.  The 
day  came.  It  was  fearfully  stormy,  and  torrents  of  rain 
fell.  A  perfect  shower-bath  was  the  portion  of  many  of 
the  guests  ;  and  finally  the  canvas  walls  and  roof  broke 
loose,  smashed  the  crockery,  and  whelmed  the  feast  in  fear- 
ful ruin.  During  the  nine  days  which  followed,  the  first 
remark  made  by  every  one  you  met  was,  '  What  a  sad 
pity  about  the  storm  spoiling  the  dinner  at  Stuckup 
Place  ! '  And  the  countenance  of  every  one  who  thus 
expressed  his  sorrow  was  radiant  with  joy  !  And  quite 
natural  too.  They  would  have  felt  real  regret  had  the 
new  peer  been  drowned  or  shot :  but  the  petty  malignity 
which  dwells  in  the  human  bosom  made  them  rejoice  at 
the  small  but  irritating  misfortune  which   had  befallen. 


BLISTERS    OF   HUMANITY.  79 

Shall   I  confess  it,  meet  culpa,  meet  maxima  culpa,  I  re- 
joiced in  common  with  all  my  fellow-creatnres  !     I  was 
ashamed  of  the  feeling.     I  wished  to  ignore  it  and  extin- 
guish it ;  hut  there  was  no  doubt  that  it  was  there.     And 
if  Lord  Newman  was  a  person  of  enlarged  and  philosoph- 
ic mind,  he  would  have  rejoiced  that  a  small  evil,  which 
merely  mortified  himself  and  gave  bad  colds  to  his  tenan- 
try, afforded  sensible  pleasure  to  several  thousands  of  his 
fellow-men.     Yes,  my  reader :  it  is  well   that  a  certain 
measure  of  small  malice  is  ingrained  in  our  fallen  nature. 
For  thus  some  pleasure   comes   out   of  almost  all  pain  ; 
some  good  from  almost  all  evil.     Your  little  troubles  vex 
you,  but  they  gratify  your  friends.     Your  horse  comes 
down  and  smashes  his  knees.     No  doubt,  to  you  and  your 
groom  it  is  unmingled  bitterness.     But  every  man  within 
several  miles,  whose  horse's  knees    have    already  been 
smashed,  hails  the  event  as  a  real  blessing   to    himself. 
You  signally  fail  of  getting  into  Parliament,  though  you 
stood  for  a  county  in  which  you  fancied  that  your  own  influ- 
ence and  that  of  your  connexions  was  all-powerful.     No 
doubt,  you  are   sadly  mortified.     No  doubt,  you  do  not 
look  like  yourself  for  several  weeks.     But  what  chuckles 
of  joy  pervade  the  hearts  and  faces  of  five  hundred  fel- 
lows who  have  no  chance  of  getting  into  the  House  them- 
selves, and  who  dislike  you  for  your  huge  fortune,  your 
grand  house,  your  countless  thoroughbreds,  your  insuffer- 
able dignity,  and  your  general  forgetfulness  of  the  place 
where  you  grew,  which  by  those  around  you  is  perfectly 
well  remembered.     And  while  it  is  true  that  even  people 
of  a  tolerably  benevolent  nature  do  not  really  feel  any 
great  regret  at  any  mortification  or  disappointment  which 
befals  a  wealthy  and  pretentious   neighbour,  it   is   also 
certain  that  a  greater  number  of  folk  do  actually  gloat 


80  CONCERNING   TWO 

over  any  event  which  humbles  the  wealthy  and  preten- 
tious man.  You  find  them,  with  a  malignant  look,  putting 
the  case  on  a  benevolent  footing.  'This  taking-down 
will  do  him  a  great  deal  of  good  :  he  will  be  much  the 
wiser  and  better  for  it.'  It  is  not  uncharitable  to  believe, 
that  in  many  eases  in  which  such  sentiments  are  expressed, 
the  true  feeling  of  the  speaker  is  rather  one  of  satisfac- 
tion, at  the  pain  which  the  disappointment  certainly  gives, 
than  of  satisfaction  at  the  beneficial  discipline  which  may 
possibly  result  from  it.  The  thing  said  amounts  to  this : 
'I  am  glad  that  Mr.  Richman  has  got  a  taking-down,  be- 
cause the  taking-down,  though  painful  at  the  time,  is  in 
fact  a  blessing.'  The  thing  felt  amounts  to  this  :  '  1  am 
glad  that  Mr.  Richman  has  got  a  taking-down,  because  I 
know  it  will  make  him  very  miserable.'  Every  one  who 
reads  this  page  knows  that  this  is  so.  Ah,  my  malicious  ac- 
quaintances, if  you  know  that  the  sentiment  you  entertain 
is  one  that  would  provoke  universal  execration  if  it  were 
expressed,  does  not  that  show  that  you  ought  not  to  enter- 
tain it  ? 

I  have  said  that  I  do  not  believe  there  is  much  real 
malignity  among  ordinary  men  and  women.  It  is  only 
at  the  petty  misfortunes  of  men's  friends  that  they  ever 
feel  this  unamiable  satisfaction.  When  great  sorrow  be- 
fals  a  friend,  all  this  unworthy  feeling  goes  ;  and  the 
heart  is  tilled  with  true  sympathy  and  kindness.  A  man 
must  be  very  bad  indeed  if  this  is  not  the  case.  It  strikes 
me  as  something  fiend-like  rather  than  human,  Byron's 
savage  exultation  over  the  melancholy  end  of  the  great 
and  amiable  Sir  Samuel  Romilly.  Roniilly  had  given 
him  offence  by  acting  as  legal  adviser  to  some  whom  By- 
ron regarded  as  his  enemies.  But  it  was  babyish  to 
cherish  enmity  for  such  a  cause  as  that  ;  and  it  was  dia- 


BLISTERS   Oi    HUMANITY.  81 

bolieal  to  rejoice  at  the  sad  close  of  that  life  of  u-eful- 
and  honour.  It  was  riot  good  in  .James  Watt,  writ- 
ing in  old  age  an  account  of  one  of  bis  many  great  in- 
vention', to  name  very  bitterly  a  man  who  had  pirated 
it ;  and  to  add,  with  a  vengeful  chuckle,  that  the  poor 
tnan  was  'afterwards  banged.9  No  private  ground  of 
offence  should  make  you  rejoice  that  your  fellow-creature 
was  hanged.  You  may  justifiably  rejoice  in  such  a  case 
only  when  the  man  hanged  was  a  public  offender,  and  an 
enemy  of  the  race.  Throw  up  your  hat,  if  you  please, 
when  Nana  Sahib  stretches  the  hemp  at  last  !  That  is 
all  right.  He  never  did  harm  to  you  individually:  but 
you  think  of  Cawnpore  ;  and  it  is  quite  fit  that  there 
should  be  a  bitter,  burning  satisfaction  felt  at  the  condign 
punishment  of  one  whose  punishment  eternal  justice  de- 
mand--. What  is  the  use  of  the  gallows,  if  not  for  that  in- 
carnate demon  ?  I  think  of  the  poor  sailors  who  were 
present  at  the  trial  of  a  bloodthirsty  pirate  of  the  Cuban 
coast  'I  suppose,'  -aid  the  one  doubtinglyto  the  other, 
'  the  devil  will  get  that  fellow.'  '  I  -hould  hope  so,'  was  the 
unhesitating  reply  ;  '  or  what  would  be  the  use  of  having 
any  devil ! ' 

lint  some  real  mischievous  malice  there  is,  even  among 
people  who  bear  a  creditable  character.  I  have  occa.-ion- 
ally  heard  old  ladies  (very  few)  tearing  up  the  character 
of  a  friend  with  looks  as  deadly  as  though  their  weapon 
had  been  a  stiletto,  instead  of  that  less  immediately  fatal 
instrument  of  offence,  concerning  which  a  very  high  au- 
thority informs  us,  that  in  some  cases  it  is  '-set  on  fire  of 
hell.'  Ah,  you  poor  girl,  wdio  danced  three  times  (they 
call  it  nine)  with  Mr.  A.  at  the  Assembly  last  night,  hap- 
pily you  do  not  know  the  venomous  way  in  which  certain 
spiteful  tabbies  are  pitching  into  you  this  morning !    And 

6 


82  CONCERNING  TWO 

you,  my  friend,  who  drove  along  Belvidere-place  (the 
fashionable  quarter  of  the  county  town)  yesterday,  in 
your  new  drag  with  the  new  harness  and  the  pair  of 
thoroughbreds,  and  fancied  that  you  were  charming  every 
eye  and  heart,  if  you  could  but  hear  how  your  equipage 
and  yourself  were  scarified  last  evening,  as  several  of 
your  elderly  female  acquaintances  sipped  together  the 
cup  that  cheers !  How  they  brought  up  the  time  that 
you  were  flogged  at  the  public  school,  and  the  term  you 
were  rusticated  at  Oxford  !  Even  the  occasion  was  not 
forgotten  on  which  your  grandfather  was  believed,  forty 
years  since,  to  have  rather  done  Mr.  Softly  in  the  matter 
of  a  glandered  steed.  And  the  peculiar  theological  tenets 
of  your  grandmother  were  set  forth  in  a  fashion  that 
would  have  astounded  that  good  old  lady.  And  you,  who 
are  so  happily  occupied  in  building  in  that  beautiful  wood- 
land spot  that  graceful  Elizabethan  house,  little  you  know 
how  bitterly  some  folk,  dwelling  in  hideous  seedy  man- 
sions, sneer  at  you  and  your  gimcracks,  and  your  Gothic 
style  in  which  you  '  go  back  to  barbarism.'  You,  too,  my 
friend,  lately  made  a  Queen's  counsel,  or  a  judge,  or  a 
bishop,  if  the  shafts  of  envy  could  kill  you,  you  would 
not  live  long.  It  is  curious,  by  the  way,  how  detraction 
follows  a  man  when  he  first  attains  to  any  eminent  place 
in  State  or  Church ;  how  keenly  his  qualifications  are 
canvassed  ;  how  loudly  his  unfitness  for  his  situation  is 
proclaimed  ;  and  how,  when  a  few  months  have  passed, 
everybody  gets  quite  reconciled  to  the  appointment,  and 
accepts  it  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  human  affairs. 
Sometimes,  indeed,  the  right  man,  by  emphasis,  is  put  in 
the  right  place ;  so  unquestionably  the  right  man  that 
even  envy  is  silenced:  as  when  Lord  St.  Leonards  was 
made  Lord    Chancellor,  or  when   Mr.  Melvill  was  ap- 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  83 

pointed  to  preach  before  the  House  of  Commons.  But 
even  when  men  who  have  been  plucked  at  the  University 
were  made  bishops,  or  princes  who  had  never  seen  a 
gun  fired  in  anger  field-marshals,  or  briefless  barristers 
judges,  although  a  general  outcry  arose  at  the  time,  it  very 
speedily  died  away.  When  you  find  a  man  actually  in  a 
place,  you  do  not  weigh  his  claims  to  be  there  so  keenly 
as  if  you  were  about  to  appoint  him  to  it.  If  a  resolute 
premier  made  Tom  Spring  a  chief-justice,  I  doubt  not 
that  in  six  weeks  the  country  would  be  quite  accustomed 
to  the  fact,  and  accept  it  as  part  of  the  order  of  nature. 
How  else  is  it  that  the  nation  is  content  to  have  blind  and 
deaf  generals  placed  in  high  command,  and  infirm  old  ad- 
mirals going  to  sea  who  ought  to  be  going  to  bed  ? 

It  is  a  sad  fact  that  there  are  men  and  women  who  will, 
without  much  investigation  as  to  its  truth,  repeat  a  story 
to  the  prejudice  of  some  man  or  woman  whom  they  know. 
They  are  much  more  critical  in  weighing  the  evidence  in 
support  of  a  tale  to  a  friend's  credit  and  advantage.  I  do 
not  think  they  would  absolutely  invent  such  a  calumnious 
narrative ;  but  they  will  repeat,  if  it  has  been  told  them, 
what,  if  they  do  not  know  it  to  be  false,  they  also  do  not 
know  to  be  true,  and  strongly  suspect  to  be  false. 

My  friend  Mr.  C,  rector  of  a  parish  in  Hampshire,  has 
a  living  of  about  five  hundred  a  year.  Some  months  ago 
he  bought  a  horse,  for  which  he  paid  fifty  pounds.  Soon 
after  he  did  so,  I  met  a  certain  malicious  woman  who 
lived  in  his  neighbourhood.  '  So,'  said  she,  with  a  look  far 
from  benevolent,  '  Mr.  C.  has  gone  and  paid  a  hundred 
pounds  for  a  horse !  Monstrous  extravagance  for  a  man 
with  his  means  and  with  a  family.'  'No,  Miss  Verjuice,' 
I  replied :  '  Mr.  C.  did  not  pay  nearly  the  sum  you  men- 
tion for  his  horse :  he  paid  no  more  for  it  than  a  man 


84  CONCERNING  TWO 

of  his  means  could  afford.'  Miss  Verjuce  was  not  in  the 
least  discomfited  by  the  failure  of  her  first  shaft  of  petty 
malignity.  She  had  another  in  her  quiver  which  she  in- 
stantly discharged.  '  Well,'  said  she,  with  a  face  of  deadly 
ferocity,  '  if  Mr.  C.  did  not  pay  a  hundred  pounds  for  his 
horse,  at  all  events  he  said  he  did  !  '  This  was  the  drop 
too  much.  I  told  Miss  Verjuice,  with  considerable  as- 
perity, that  my  friend  was  incapable  of  petty  vapouring 
and  petty  falsehood ;  and  in  my  book,  from  that  day  for- 
ward, there  has  stood  a  black  cross  against  the  individu- 
al's name. 

Egypt,  it  seems,  is  the  country  where  malevolence  in 
the  sense  of  pure  envy  of  people  who  are  better  off",  is 
most  prevalent  and  is  most  feared.  People  there  believe 
that  the  envious  eye  does  harm  to  those  on  whom  it 
rests.  Thus,  they  are  afraid  to  possess  fine  houses, 
furniture,  and  horses,  lest  they  should  excite  envy  and 
bring  misfortune.  And  when  they  allow  their  children 
to  go  out  for  a  walk,  they  send  them  dirty  and  ill-dressed, 
for  fear  the  covetous  eye  should  injure  them:  — 

At  the  bottom  of  this  superstition  is  an  enormous  prevalence  of 
envy  among  the  lower  Egyptians.  You  see  it  in  all  their  fictions. 
Half  of  the  stories  told  in  the  coffee-shops  by  the  professional  story- 
tellers, of  which  the  Arabian  Nights  are  a  specimen,  turn  on  malevo- 
lence. Malevolence,  not  attributed,  as  it  would  be  in  European 
fiction,  to  some  insult  or  injury  inflicted  by  the  person  who  is  its 
object,  but  to  mere  envy:  envy  of  wealth,  or  of  the  other  means  of 
enjoyment,  honourably  acquired  and  liberally  used.* 

A  similar  envy,  no  doubt,  occasionally  exists  in  this 

country;  but  people  here  are  too  enlightened  to  fancy 

that  it  can   do   them   any  harm.     Indeed,  so   far  from 

standing  in  fear  of  exciting  envy  by  their  display  of 

possessions  and  advantages,  some  people  feel  much  grati- 

*  Archbishop  Whately's  Bacon,  p.  97. 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  85 

fied  at  the  thought  of  the  amount  of  envy  and  malignity 
which  they  are  likely  to  excite.  '  Wont  old  Hunks  turn 
green  with  fury,'  said  a  friend  to  me,  '  the  first  time  I 
drive  up  to  his  door  with  those  horses  ? '  They  were 
indeed  beautiful  animals  ;  but  their  proprietor  appeared 
to  prize  them  less  for  the  pleasure  they  afforded  himself, 
than  for  the  mortification  they  would  inflict  on  certain  of 
his  neighbours.  'Wont  Mrs.  Grundy  burst  with  spite 
when  she  sees  this  drawing-room  ? '  was  the  remark  of 
my  lately-married  cousin  Henrietta,  when  she  showed 
me  that  very  pretty  apartment  for  the  first  time.  'Wont 
Snooks  be  ferocious,'  said  Mr.  Dryasdust  the  book-col- 
lector, 'when  he  hears  that  I  have  got  this  almost  unique 
edition  ? '  Ah,  my  fellow-creatures,  we  are  indeed  a 
fallen  race  ! 

Hazlitt  maintains  that  the  petty  malignity  of  mortals 
finds  its  most  striking  field  in  the  matter  of  will-making:. 
He  says : 

The  last  act  of  our  lives  seldom  belies  the  former  tenor  of  them  for 
stupidity,  caprice,  and  unmeaning  spite.  All  that  we  seem  to  think 
of  is  to  manage  matters  so  (in  settling  accounts  with  those  who  are 
so  unmannerly  as  to  survive  us)  as  to  do  as  little  good,  and  plague 
and  disappoint  as  many  people  as  possible.* 

Every  one  knows  that  this  brilliant  essayist  was 
accustomed  to  deal  in  sweeping  assertions ;  and  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  such  cases  as  that  which  he  here  describes 
form  the  exception  to  the  rule.  But  it  must  be  admitted 
that  most  of  us  have  heard  of  wills  at  whose  reading  we 
might  almost  imagine  their  malicious  maker  fancied  he 
might  be  invisibly  present  to  chuckle  over  the  disap- 
pointment and  mortification  which  he  was  dealing  even 
from  his  grave.     Cases  are  also  recorded  in  which  rich 

*  Table-Talk,  vol.  i.  p.  171.     '  Essay  on  Will-making.' 


86  CONCERNING   TWO 

okl  bachelor?  have  played  upon  the  hopes  of  half  a  dozen 
poor  relations,  by  dropping  hints  to  each  separately  that 
he  was  to  be  the  fortunate  heir  of  all  their  wealth :  and 
then  have  left  their  fortune  to  an  hospital,  or  have  de- 
parted from  this  world  intestate,  leaving  an  inheritance 
mainlv  of  quarrels,  heart-burnings,  and  Chancery  suits. 
How  often  the  cringing,  tale-bearing  toady,  who  has 
borne  the  ill-humours  of  a  rich  sour  old  maid  for  thirty 
years,  in  the  hope  of  a  legacy,  is  cut  otf  with  nineteen 
guineas  for  a  mourning  ring !  You  would  say  perhaps. 
1  Serve  her  right.'  I  differ  from  you.  If  any  one  likes 
to  be  toadied,  he  ought  in  honesty  to  pay  for  it.  He 
knows  quite  well  he  would  never  have  got  it  save  for 
the  hope  of  payment ;  and  you  have  no  more  right  to 
swindle  some  poor  creature  out  of  years  of  cringing  and 
flattering  than  out  of  pounds  of  money.  A  very  odd 
case  of  petty  malice  in  will-making  was  that  of  a  man 
who.  not  having  a  penny  in  this  world,  left  a  will  in 
which  he  bequeathed  to  his  friends  and  acquaintance 
large  estates  in  various  parts  of  England,  money  in  the 
funds,  rings,  jewels,  and  plate.  His  inducement  was  the 
prospect  of  the  delight  of  his  friends  at  first  learning 
about  the  rich  possessions  which  were  to  be  theirs,  and 
then  the  bitter  disappointment  at  finding  how  thev  had 
been  hoaxed.  Such  deceptions  and  hoaxes  are  very 
cruel.  Who  does  not  feel  for  poor  Moore  and  his  wife, 
receiving  a  lawyer's  letter  just  at  a  season  of  special 
embarrassment,  to  say  that  some  deceased  admirer  of  the 
poet  had  left  him  five  hundred  pounds,  and.  after  being 
buoyed  up  with  hope  for  a  few  days,  finding  that  some 
malicious  rascal  had  been  playing  upon  them  !  No;  poor 
people  know  that  want  of  money  is  too  serious  a  matter 
to  be  joked  about. 


BLISTERS    OF    HUMANITY. 

Let    me    conclude   what  I  have   to   say   about   petty 
malignity  by  observing  that  I  am  very  far  from  main- 
taining that  all  unfavourable  remark  about  people  you 
know  proceeds  from  this  unamiable  motive.     Some  folk 
appear  to  fancy  that  if  you  speak  of  any  man  in  any 
terms  but  those  of  superlative  praise,  this  must  be  be- 
cause you  bear  him  some  ill-will :  they  cannot  understand 
that  you  may  merely  wish  to  speak  truth  and  do  justice. 
Every  person   who   writes   a  stupid  book  and  finds  it 
unfavourably  noticed  in  any  review,  instantly  concludes 
that  the  reviewer  must  be  actuated  by  some  petty  spite. 
The   author   entirely  overlooks  the  alternative  that  his 
book  may  be  said  to  be  bad  because  it  is  bad,  and  be- 
cause it  is  the  reviewer's  duty  to  say  so  if  he  thinks  so. 
I  remember  to  have  heard  the  friend  of  a  lady  who  had 
published  a  bitterly  bad  and  unbecoming  work  speaking 
of  the  notice  of  it  which  had  appeared  in  a  periodical  of 
the  very  highest  class.     The  notice  was  of  course  unfa- 
vourable.    ; Oh,'  said  the  writer's  friend,  'I  know  why 
the  review  was  so  disgraceful:    the  man  who  wrote  it 
was  lately  jilted,  and  he  hates  all  women  in  consequence ! ' 
It  happened  that  I  had  very  good  reason  to  know  who 
wrote  the  depreciatory  article,  and  I  could  declare  that 
the  motive  assigned  to  the  reviewer  had  not  the  least, 
existence  in  fact. 

Unfavourable  remark  has  frequently  no  earthly  con- 
nexion with  malignity  great  or  petty.  It  is  quite  fit  that. 
as  in  people's  presence  politeness  requires  that  you  should 
not  say  what  you  think  of  them,  you  should  have  an 
opportunity  of  doing  so  in  their  absence ;  and  every  one 
feels  when  the  limits  of  fair  criticism  are  passed.  What 
could  you  do  if,  after  listening  with  every  appearance  of 
interest  to  some  old  lady's  wearisome  vapouring,  you 
felt  bound  to  pretend,  after  you  had  made  your  escape. 


88  CONCEKNING  TWO 

that  you  thought  her  conversation  was  exceedingly  inter- 
esting ?  What  a  relief  it  is  to  tell  what  you  have  suf- 
fered to  some  sympathetic  friend  !  I  have  heard  injudi- 
cious people  say,  as  something  much  to  a  man's  credit, 
that  he  never  speaks  of  any  mortal  except  in  his  praise. 
I  do  not  think  the  fact  is  to  the  man's  advantage.  It 
appears  to  prove  either  that  the  man  is  so  silly  that  he 
thinks  everything  he  hears  and  sees  to  be  good,  or  that 
he  is  so  crafty  and  reserved  that  he  will  not  commit  him- 
self by  saying  what  he  thinks.  Outspoken  good-nature 
will  sometimes  get  into  scrapes  from  which  self-contained 
craft  will  keep  free  ;  but  the  man  who,  to  use  Miss 
Edgeworth's  phrase,  '  thinks  it  best  in  general  not  to 
speak  of  things,'  will  be  liked  by  nobody. 

By  petty  trickery  I  mean  that  small  deception  which 
annoys  and  worries  you,  without  doing  you  material 
harm.  Thus  it  passes  petty  trickery  when  a  bank  pub- 
lishes a  swindling  report,  on  the  strength  of  whose  false 
representations  of  prosperity  you  invest  your  hard-won 
savings  in  its  stock  and  lose  them  all.  It  passes  petty 
trickery  when  your  clerk  absconds  with  some  hundreds 
of  pounds.  It  indicates  petty  trickery  when  you  find 
your  servants  writing  their  letters  on  your  crested  note- 
paper,  and  enclosing  them  in  your  crested  envelopes.  It 
indicates  that  at  some  time  or  other  a  successful  raid  has 
been  made  upon  your  paper-drawer.  It  indicates  petty 
trickery  when  you  find  your  horses'  ribs  beginning  to  be 
conspicuous,  though  they  are  only  half  worked  and  are 
allowed  three  feeds  of  corn  a  day.  Observe  your  coach- 
man then,  my  friend.  Some  of  your  corn  is  going 
where  it  should  not.  It  indicates  petty  trickery  when 
your  horses'  coats  are  full  of  dust,  though  whenever  you 
happen  to  be  present  they  are  groomed  with  incredible 
vigour:  they  are  not  so  in  your  absence.     It  indicates 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  89 

petty  trickery  when,  suddenly  turning  a  corner,  you  find 
your  coachman  galloping  the  horses  along  the  turnpike- 
road  at  the  rate  of  twentv-three  miles  an  hour.  It  indi- 
cates  petty  trickery  when  you  find  your  neighbours'  cows 
among  your  clover.  It  indicates  petty  trickery  when  you 
find  amid  a  cottager's  stock  of  firewood  several  palisades 
taken  from  your  park -fence.  It  indicates  petty  trickery 
when  you  discern  in  the  morning  the  traces  of  very 
large  hobnailed  shoes  crossing  your  wife's  flower-garden 
towards  the  tree  where  the  magnum  bonums  are  nearly 
ripe.  But  why  extend  the  catalogue  ?  Every  man  can 
add  to  it  a  hundred  instances.  Says  Bacon,  '  The  small 
wares  and  petty  points  of  cunning  are  infinite,  and  it 
were  a  good  deed  to  make  a  list  of  them.'  Who  could 
make  such  a  list  ?  What  numbers  of  people  are  practis- 
ing petty  trickery  at  every  hour  of  the  day  !  Yet,  foras- 
much as  these  tricks  are  small  and  pretty  frequently  seen 
through,  they  form  only  a  blister:  they  are  irritating  but 
not  dangerous  :  and  it  is  very  irritating  to  know  that  you 
have  been  cheated,  to  however  small  an  extent.  How 
inestimable  is  a  thoroughly  honest  servant !  Apart  from 
anything  like  principle,  if  servants  did  but  know  it,  it  is 
well  worth  their  while  to  be  strictly  truthful  and  reliable: 
they  are  then  valued  so  much.  It  is  highly  expedient, 
besides  being  right.  And  not  only  is  it  extremely  vex- 
atious to  find  out  any  domestic  in  dishonesty  of  any  kind  ; 
not  only  does  it  act  as  a  blister  at  the  moment,  but  it  fos- 
ters in  one's  self  a  suspicious  habit  of  mind  which  has  in 
it  something  degrading.  It  is  painful  to  be  obliged  to 
feel  that  you  must  keep  a  strict  watch  upon  your  stable 
or  your  granary.  You  have  somewhat  of  the  feeling 
of  a  spy;  yet  you  cannot,  if  you  have  ordinary  powers 
of  observation,  shut  your  eyes  to  what  passes  round 
you. 


90  CONCERNING   TWO 

There  is.  indeed,  some   petty  trickery  which   is   highly 
venial,   not    to    say    pleasing.     "When  a   little   child,  on 
being  offered  a  third  plate  of  plum-pudding,  says,  with 
a  wistful,  and  half-ashamed  look, 'No,  thank  you,'  well 
vou  know  that  the  statement   is  not  entirely  candid,  and 
that  the  poor  little   thing  would  he  sadly  disappointed  if 
you  took  him  at  his  word.     Think  of  your  own  childish 
days  :  think  what  plum-pudding  was  then,  and  instantly 
send  the  little  man  a  third  plate,  larger  than  the  pre- 
vious two.     So  if  your  gardener  gets  wet  to  the  skin  in 
mowing   a    little    bit    of  turf,  in    a   drenching    summer- 
shower,  which  turns   it.  parched  for  the  last  fortnight,  to 
emerald  green,  tell  him  he  must  he  very  wet.  and  give  him 
a  glass  of  whisky  :  never  mind,  though  he,  in  his  polite- 
ness, declares  that   he   does   not  want   the  whisky,  and  is 
perfectly  dry  and  comfortable.     You  will  find  him  very 
readily  dispose  of  the  proffered  refreshment.      So  if  you 
go  into  a  poor,  hut  spotlessly-clean  little  cottage,  where  a 
lonely  widow  of  eighty  sits  by  her  spinning-wheel.     Her 
husband  and  her  children  are  dead,  and  there  she  is.  all 
alone,  waiting  till  she  goes  to  rejoin  them.    A  poor,  dog's- 
.  and.    ill-printed    Bible   lies    on    the    rickety   deal-table 
near.     You  take  a  large  parcel  which  you  have  brought. 
wrapped  in  brown  paper  ;  and  as  you  talk  with  the  good 
old  Christian,  you   gradually  untie   it.     A  well-sized  vol- 
ume appears  :  it  is  the  Volume  which  is  worth  all   the 
rest    that    ever   were   written  ;  and   you   tell   your   aged 
friend  that  you  have   brought    her  a    Bible,  with   great. 
clear  type,  which  will  be  easily  read  by  her  failing  ey<  -. 
and  you  ask  her  to  accept  it.     You  see  the  flush  of  joy 
and  gratitude  on  her  face,  and   you    do  not   mind   though 
she   says   something  which   is   not    strictly  true  —  that    it 
was  too  kind  of  you.  that  she  did  not  need  it,  that  she 
could    manage  with   the   old   one  yet.     Nor  would  you 


BLISTERS   OF  HTUAMTT.  91 

severelv  blame  the  brave  fellow  who  jumped  off  a  bridge 
forty  feet  high,  and  pulled  out  your  brother  when  he  was 
just  sinking  in  a  flooded  river,  if.  when  you  thanked  him 
with  a  full  heart  for  the  risk  he  had  run.  he  replied,  in  a 
careless,  good-humoured  wav.  that  he  had  reallv  done 
nothing  worth  the  speaking  of.  The  brave  man  is 
pained  by  your  thanks  :  but  he  thought  of  his  wife  and 
children  when  he  leaped  from  the  parapet,  and  he  knew 
well  that  he  was  hazarding  his  life.  And  he  is  perfectly 
aware  that  the  statement  which  he  makes  is  not  consis- 
tent with  fact — but  surely  you  would  never  call  him  a 
trickster  ! 

Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  unquestionably  a  very  courageous  as 
well  as  a  very  able  writer,  has  declared  in  a  recent  publi- 
cation, that,  in  Great  Britain,  the  higher  classes,  for  the 
most  part,  speak  the  truth,  while  the  lower  classes,  almost 
without  exception,  have  frecpient  recourse  to  falsehood. 
I  think  Mr.  Mill  must  have  been  unfortunate  in  his 
experience  of  the  poor.  I  have  seen  much  of  them,  and 
I  have  found  among  them  much  honestv  and  truthfulness, 
along  with  great  kindness  of  heart.  Thev  have  little  to 
give  away  in  the  form  of  money,  but  will  cheerfully  give 
their  time  and  strength  in  the  service  of  a  sick  neigh- 
bour. I  have  known  a  shepherd  who  had  come  in  from 
the  hills  in  the  twilight  of  a  cold  December  afternoon, 
weary  and  worn  out,  find  that  the  little  child  of  a  poor 
widow  in  the  next  cottage  had  suddenly  been  taken  ill, 
and  without  sitting  down,  take  his  stick,  and  walk  away 
through  the  dark  to  the  town  nine  miles  off,  to  fetch  the 
doctor.  And  when  I  told  the  fine  fellow  how  much  I 
respected  his  manly  kindness,  1  found  he  was  quite  un- 
aware that  he  had  done  anything  remarkable  ; '  it  was  just 
what  onv  neibour  wad  do  for  anither ! '     And  I  could 


92  CONCERNING   TWO 

mention  scores  of  similar  cases.  And  as  for  truthfulness, 
I  have  known  men  and  women  among  the  peasantry, 
both  of  England  and  Scotland,  whom  I  would  have 
trusted  with  untold  gold  —  or  even  with  what  the  High- 
land laird  thought  a  more  seai'ching  test  of  rectitude  — 
with  unmeasured  whisky.  Still,  I  must  sorrowfully 
admit  that  I  have  found  in  many  people  a  strong  tendency, 
when  they  had  done  anything  wrong,  to  justify  them- 
selves by  falsehood.  It  is  not  impossible  that  over-severe 
masters  and  mistresses,  by  undue  scoldings  administered 
for  faults  of  no  great  moment,  foster  this  unhappy  ten- 
dency. It  was  not,  however,  of  one  class  more  than 
another,  that  the  quaint  old  minister  of  a  parish  in  Lan- 
arkshire was  speaking,  when  one  Sunday  morning  he 
read  as  his  text  the  verse  in  the  Psalms,  '  I  said  in  my 
haste,  All  men  are  liars,'  and  began  his  sermon  by 
thoughtfully  saying :  — 

'  Aye,  David,  ye  said  it  in  your  haste,  did  you  ?  If 
ye  had  lived  in  this  parish,  ye  might  have  said  it  at  your 
leisure  ! ' 

There  is  hardly  a  sadder  manifestation  of  the  spirit  of 
petty  trickery  than  that  which  has  been  pressed  on  the 
attention  of  the  public  by  recent  accounts  of  the  adulter- 
ation of  food.     It  is,  indeed,  sad  enough, 

When  chalk,  and  alum,  and  plaster,  are  sold  to  the  poor  for  bread, 
And  the  spirit  of  murder  works  in  the  very  means  of  life  : 

and  when  the  luxuries  of  the  rich  are  in  many  cases 
quite  as  much  tampered  with ;  while,  when  medical 
appliances  become  needful  to  correct  the  evil  effects  of 
red  lead,  plaster  of  Paris,  cantharides,  and  oil  of  vitriol, 
the  physician  is  quite  uncertain  as  to  the  practical  power 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  93 

of  the  medicine  he  prescribes,  inasmuch  as  drugs  are  as 
much  adulterated  as  food.  Still,  there  seems  reason  to 
hope  that,  more  frequently  than  the  Lancet  Commission 
would  lead  one  to  think,  you  really  get  in  the  shops  the 
thing  you  ask  and  pay  for.  I  firmly  believe  that,  in  this 
remote  district  of  the  world,  such  petty  dishonesty  is 
unknown  :  and  I  cannot  refrain  from  saying  that,  notwith- 
standing all  I  have  read  of  late  years  in  tracts,  sermons, 
poems,  and  leading  articles,  of  the  frequency  of  fraud  in 
the  dealings  of  tradesmen  in  towns,  I  never  in  my  own 
experience  have  seen  the  least  trace  of  it. 

Most  human  beings,  however,  will  tell  you  that  day 
by  day  they  witness  a  good  deal  of  indirectness,  insincer- 
ity, and  want  of  stz-aightforwardness  —  in  fact,  of  petty 
trickery.  There  are  many  people  who  appear  incapa- 
ble of  doing  anything  without  going  round  about  the 
bush,  as  Caledonians  say.  There  are  many  people  who 
always  try  to  disguise  the  real  motive  for  what  they  do. 
They  will  tell  you  of  anything  but  the  consideration  that 
actually  weighs  with  them,  though  that  is  in  most  cases 
perfectly  well  known  to  the  person  they  are  talking  to. 
Some  men  will  tell  you  that  they  travel  second-class  by 
railway  because  it  is  warmer,  cooler,  airier,  pleasanter 
than  the  first-class.  They  suppress  all  mention  of  the 
consideration  that  obviously  weighs  with  them,  viz.,  that 
it  is  cheaper.  Mr.  Squeers  gave  the  boys  at  Dotheboys 
Hall  treacle  and  sulphur  one  morning  in  the  week.  The 
reason  he  assigned  was  that  it  was  good  for  their  health  : 
but  his  more  outspoken  wife  stated  the  true  reason,  which 
was  that,  by  sickening  the  children,  it  made  breakfast 
unnecessary  upon  that  day.  Some  Dissenters  pretend 
that  they  want  to  abolish  Church-rates,  with  a  view  to  the 
good   of  the   Church  :  of  course  everybody  knows   that 


94  CONCERNING  TWO 

their  real  wish  is  to  do  the  Church  harm.  Very  soft 
indeed  would  the  members  of  the  Church  be,  if  they 
believed  that  its  avowed  enemies  are  extremely  anxious 
for  its  welfare.  But  the  forms  of  petty  trickery  are  end- 
less. Bacon  mentions  in  one  of  his  Essays  that  he  knew 
a  statesman  who,  when  he  came  to  Queen  Elizabeth  with 
bills  to  sign,  always  engaged  her  in  conversation  about 
something  else,  to  distract  her  attention  from  the  papers 
she  was  signing.  And  when  some  impudent  acquaint- 
ance asks  you,  reader,  to  put  your  name  to  another 
kind  of  bill,  for  his  advantage,  does  he  not  always  think 
to  delude  you  into  doing  so  by  saying  that  your  signing  is 
a  mere  form,  intended  only  for  the  fuller  satisfaction  of 
the  bank  that  is  to  lend  him  the  money  ?  He  does  not 
tell  you  that  he  is  just  asking  you  to  give  him  the  sum 
named  on  that  stamped  paper.  Don't  believe  a  word  he 
says,  and  show  him  the  door.  Signing  a  promise  to  pay 
money  is  never  a  form  ;  if  it  be  a  form,  why  does  he  ask 
you  to  do  it  ?  Bacon  mentions  another  man,  who  '  when 
he  came  to  have  speech,  would  pass  over  that  he 
intended  most,  and  go  forth,  and  come  back  again,  and 
speak  of  it  as  a  thing  he  had  almost  forgot.'  I  have 
known  such  men  too.  We  have  all  known  men  who 
would  come  and  talk  about  many  indifferent  things,  and 
then  at  the  end  bring  in  as  if  accidentally  the  thing 
they  came  for.  Always  pull  such  men  sharply  up.  Let 
them  understand  that  you  see  through  them.  When  they 
sit  down,  and  begin  to  talk  of  the  weather,  the  affairs  of 
the  district,  the  new  railway,  and  so  forth,  say  at  once, 
'  Now,  Mr.  Pawky,  I  know  you  did  not  come  to  talk  to 
me  about  these  things.  What  is  it  you  want  to  speak  of? 
I  am  busy,  and  have  no  time  to  waste.'  It  is  wonderful 
how  this  will  beat  down  Mr.  Pawky's  guard.     He  is  pre- 


BLISTERS    OF   HUMANITY.  95 

pared  for  sly  finesse,  but  he  is  quite  taken  aback  by  down- 
right honesty.  If  you  try  to  do  him,  he  will  easily  do 
you  :  but  perfect  candour  foils  the  crafty  man,  as  the  sturdy 
Highlander's  broadsword  at  once  cut  down  the  French 
master  of  fence,  vapouring  away  with  his  rapier.  You 
cannot  beat  a  rogue  with  his  own  weapons.  Try  him 
with  truth  :  like  David,  he  '  has  not  proved '  that  armour  ; 
he  is  quite  unaccustomed  to  it,  and  he  goes  down. 

Men  in  towns  knowr  that  time  is  valuable  to  them  ;  and 
by  long  experience  they  are  assured  that  there  is  no  use 
in  trying  to  overreach  a  neighbour  in  a  bargain,  because 
he  is  so  sharp  that  they  will  not  succeed.     But  in  agri- 
cultural districts  some  persons  may  be  found  who  appear 
to  regard  it  as  a  fond  delusion  that  '  honesty  is  the   best 
policy ; '    and   who  never  deal  with  a  stranger  without 
feeling  their  way,  and  trying  how  far  it  may  be  possible 
to  cheat  him.     I  am   glad  to   infer,  from  the  universal 
contempt  in  which  such  persons  are  held,  that  they  form 
base,  though  by  no  means  infrequent,  exceptions  to  the 
general  rule.     The  course  which  such  individuals  follow 
in  buying  and  selling  is  quite  marked  and  invariable.     If 
they  wish  to  buy  a  cow  or  rent  a  field,  they  begin  by 
declaring  with  frequency  and  vehemence  that  they  don't 
want   the    thing,  —  that  in  fact  they  would  rather  not 
have  it,  —  that   it  would  be    inconvenient    for   them    to 
become  possessors  of  it.     They  then  go  on  to  say  that 
still,  if  they  can  get    it  at   a  fair  price,  they  may  be 
induced  to  think  of  it.     They  next  declare  that  the  cow 
is  the  very  worst  that  ever  was  seen,  and  that  very  few 
men  would  have  such  a  creature  in  their  possession.     The 
seller  of  the  cow,  if  he  knows  his  customer,  meanwhile 
listens  with  entire  indifference  to  Mr.  Pawky's  assevera- 
tions, and   after  a  while   proceeds   to   name  his   price. 


96  CONCERNING  TWO 

Fifteen  pounds  for  the  cow.  '  Oh,'  says  Mr.  Pawky, 
getting  up  hastily  and  putting  on  his  hat,  '  I  see  you  don't 
want  to  sell  it.  I  was  just  going  to  have  offered  you  five 
pounds.  I  see  I  need  not  spend  longer  time  here.'  Mr. 
Pawky,  however,  does  not  leave  the  room :  sometimes, 
indeed,  if  dealing  with  a  green  hand,  he  may  actually 
depart  for  half  an  hour  ;  but  then  he  returns  and  resumes 
the  negotiation.  A  friend  of  his  has  told  him  that  possi- 
bly the  cow  was  better  than  it  looked.  It  looked  very 
bad  indeed  ;  but  it  might  be  a  fair  cow  after  all.  So  the 
proceedings  go  on  :  and  after  an  hour's  haggling,  and 
several  scores  of  falsehoods  told  by  Mr.  Pawky,  he 
becomes  the  purchser  of  the  animal  for  the  sum  origi- 
nally named.  Even  now  he  is  not  exhausted.  He  assures 
the  former  owner  of  the  cow  that  it  is  the  custom  of  the 
district  always  to  give  back  half-a-crown  in  the  pound, 
and  refuses  to  hand  over  more  than  £13  2s.  Qd.  The 
cow  is  by  this  time  on  its  way  to  Mr.  Pawky's  farm.  If 
dealing  with  a  soft  man,  this  final  trick  possibly  succeeds. 
If  with  an  experienced  person,  it  wholly  fails.  And  Mr. 
Pawky,  after  wasting  two  hours,  telling  sixty-five  lies, 
and  stamping  himself  as  a  cheat  in  the  estimation  of  the 
person  with  whom  he  was  dealing,  ends  by  taking  noth- 
ing by  all  his  petty  trickery.  Oh,  poor  Pawky,  why  not 
be  honest  and  straightforward  at  once  ?  You  would  get 
just  as  much  money,  in  five  cases  out  of  six ;  and  you 
would  save  your  time  and  breath,  and  miss  running  up 
that  fearful  score  in  the  book  of  the  recording  an^el ! 

After  any  transaction  with  Mr-  Pawky,  how  delightful 
it  is  to  meet  with  a  downright  honest  man !  I  know 
several  men  —  farmers,  labourers,  country  gentlemen  — 
of  that  noble  class,  whose  '  word  is  as  good  as  their  bond  !' 
I  know  men  whom  you  could  not  even  imagine  as  taking 


BLISTERS    OF   HUMANITY.  97 

a  petty  advantage  of  any  mortal.  They  are  probably  far 
from  being  pieces  of  perfection.  They  are  crotchety  in 
temper ;  they  are  rough  in  address  ;  their  clothes  were 
never  made  by  Stultz  ;  possibly  they  do  not  shave  every 
morning.  But  as  I  look  at  the  open,  manly  face,  and 
feel  the  strong  gripe  of  the  vigorous  hand,  and  rejoice  to 
think  that  the  world  goes  well  with  them,  and  that  they 
find  it  pay  to  speak  the  truth,  —  I  feel  for  the  minute  as 
if  the  somewhat  overstrained  sentiment  had  truth  in  it, 

that 

An  honest  man's  the  noblest  work  of  God  ! 

I  am  firmly  convinced  that  no  man,  in  the  long  run, 
gains  by  petty  trickery.  Honesty  is  the  best  policy. 
You  remember  how  the  roguish  Ephraim  Jenkinson,  in 
the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  mentioned  that  he  contrived  to 
cheat  honest  Farmer  Flamborough  about  once  a  year ; 
but  still  the  honest  farmer  grew  rich,  and  the  rogue  grew 
poor,  and  so  Jenkinson  began  to  bethink  him  that  he  was 
in  the  wrong  track  after  all.  A  man  who  with  many 
oaths  declares  a  brokenwinded  nag  is  sound  as  a  bell, 
and  thus  gets  fifty  pounds  for  an  animal  he  bought  for 
ten,  and  then  declares  with  many  more  oaths  that  he 
never  warranted  the  horse,  may  indeed  gain  forty  pounds 
in  money  by  that  transaction,  but  he  loses  much  more 
than  he  gains.  The  man  whom  he  cheated,  and  the 
friends  of  the  man  whom  he  cheated,  will  never  trust  him 
again  ;  and  he  soon  acquires  such  a  character  that  every 
one  who  is  compelled  to  have  any  dealings  with  him 
stands  on  his  guard  and  does  not  believe  a  syllable  he 
says.  I  do  not  mention  here  the  solemn  consideration  of 
how  the  gain  and  loss  may  be  adjusted  in  the  view  of  an- 
other world ;  nor  do  more  than  allude  to  a  certain  solemn 
question  as  to  the  profit  which  would  follow  the  gain  of 
7 


98  CONCERNING  TWO 

much  more  than  forty  pounds,  by  means  which  would 
damage  something  possessed  by  every  man.  All  trickery 
is  folly.  Every  rogue  is  a  fool.  The  publisher  who 
advertises  a  book  he  has  brought  out,  and  appends  a 
flattering  criticism  of  it  as  from  the  Times  or  Fraser's 
Magazine  which  never  appeared  in  either  periodical,  does 
not  gain  on  the  whole  by  such  petty  deception  ;  neither 
does  the  publisher  who  appends  highly  recommendatory 
notices,  marked  with  inverted  commas  as  quotations, 
though  with  the  name  of  no  periodical  attached,  the  fact 
being  that  he  composed  these  notices  himself.  You  will 
say  that  Mr.  Barnum  is  an  instance  of  a  man  who  made 
a  large  fortune  by  the  greater  and  lesser  arts  of  trickery  ; 
but  would  you,  my  honest  and  honourable  friend,  have 
taken  that  fortune  on  the  same  terms?  I  hope  not. 
And  no  blessing  seems  to  have  rested  on  Barnum's  gains. 
Where  are  they  now  ?  The  trickster  has  been  tricked 
—  the  doer  done.  There  is  a  hollowness  about  all  pros- 
perity which  is  the  result  of  unfair  and  underhand 
means.  Even  if  a  man  who  has  grown  rich  through 
trickery  seems  to  be  going  on  quite  comfortably,  depend 
upon  it  he  cannot  feel  happy.  The  sword  of  Damocles  is 
hanging  over  his  head.  Let  no  man  be  called  happy 
before  he  dies. 

I  believe,  indeed,  that  in  some  cases  the  conscience 
grows  quite  callous,  and  the  notorious  cheat  fancies  him- 
self a  highly  moral  and  religious  man  ;  and  although  it 
is  always  extremely  irritating  to  be  cheated,  it  is  more 
irritating  than  usual  to  think  that  the  man  who  has 
cheated  you  is  not  even  made  uneasy  by  the  checks  of 
his  own  conscience.     I  would  gladly  think  that  in  most 

cases, 

Doubtless  the  pleasure  is  as  great 
Of  being  cheated  as  to  cheat. 


BLISTERS   OF  HUMANITY.  99 

I  would  gladly  think  that  the  man  who  has  done 
another  feels  it  as  blistering  to  remember  the  fact  as  the 
man  who  has  been  done  does.  It  would  gratify  me 
much  if  I  were  able  to  conclude  that  every  man  who  is  a 
knave  knows  that  he  is  one.  I  doubt  it.  Probably  he 
merely  thinks  himself  a  sharp,  clever  fellow.  Only  this 
morning  I  was  cheated  out  of  four  and  sixpence  by  a 
man  of  very  decent  appearance.  He  obtained  that  sum 
by  making  three  statements,  which  I  found  on  inquiring, 
after  he  had  gone,  were  false.  The  gain,  you  see,  was 
small.  He  obtained  just  eighteenpence  a  lie.  Yet  he 
went  off,  looking  extremely  honest.  And  no  doubt  he 
will  be  at  his  parish  church  next  Sunday,  shaking  his  head 
sympathetically  at  the  more  solemn  parts  of  the  sermon. 
And  probably,  when  he  reflects  upon  the  transaction,  he 
merely  thinks  that  he  was  sharp  and  I  was  soft.  The 
analogy  between  these  small  tricks  and  a  blister  holds  in 
several  respects.  Each  is  irritating,  and  the  irritation 
caused  by  each  gradually  departs.  You  are  very  indig- 
nant at  first  learning  that  you  have  been  taken  in  ;  you 
are  rather  soz'e,  even  the  day  after,  —  but  the  day  after 
that  you  are  less  sore  at  having  been  done  than  sorry  for 
the  rogue  who  was  fool  enough  to  do  you. 

I  am  writing  only  of  that  petty  trickery  which  acts  as 
a  blister  of  humanity ;  as  I  need  say  nothing  of  those 
numerous  forms  of  petty  trickery  which  do  not  irritate, 
but  merely  amuse.  Such  are  those  silly  arts  by  which 
some  people  try  to  represent  themselves  to  their  fellow- 
creatures  as  richer,  wiser,  better-informed,  more  highly 
connected,  more  influential  and  more  successful  than  the 
fact.  I  felt  no  irritation  at  the  schoolboy  who  sat  oppo- 
site me  the  other  day  in  a  railway  carriage,  and  pretend- 
ed that  he  was  reading  a  Greek  play.     I  allowed  him  to 


100    CONCEKNING   TWO   BLISTEKS   OF  HUMANITY. 

fancy  his  trick  had  succeeded,  and  conversed  with  him  of 
the  characteristics  of  iEschylus.  He  did  not  know  much 
about  them.  A  friend  of  mine,  a  clergyman,  went  to  the 
house  of  a  weaver  in  his  parish.  As  he  was  about  to 
knock  at  the  door,  he  heard  a  solemn  voice  within ;  and 
he  listened  in  silence  as  the  weaver  asked  God's  blessing 
upon  his  food.  Then  he  lifted  the  latch  and  entered  : 
and  thereupon  the  weaver,  resolved  that  the  clergyman 
should  know  he  said  grace  before  meat,  began  and  re- 
peated his  grace  over  again.  My  friend  was  not  angry  ; 
but  he  was  very,  very  sorry.  And  never,  till  the  man 
had  been  years  in  his  grave,  did  he  mention  the  fact. 
As  for  the  fashion  in  which  some  people  fire  off,  in  con- 
versation with  a  new  acquaintance,  every  titled  name 
they  know,  it  is  to  be  recorded  that  the  trick  is  invaria- 
bly as  unsuccessful  as  it  is  contemptible.  And  is  not  a 
state  dinner,  given  by  poor  people,  in  resolute  imitation 
of  people  with  five  times  their  income,  with  its  sham 
champagne,  its  disguised  greengrocers,  and  its  general 
turning  the  house  topsy-turvy,  —  is  not  such  a  dinner 
one  great  trick,  and  a  very  transparent  one? 

The  writer  is  extremely  tired.  Is  it  not  curious  that 
to  write  for  four  or  five  hours  a  day  for  four  or  five  suc- 
cessive days,  wearies  a  man  to  a  degree  that  ten  or 
twelve  daily  hours  of  ploughing  does  not  weary  the  man 
whose  work  is  physical  ?  Mental  work  is  much  the 
greater  stretch :  and  it  is  strain,  not  time,  that  kills.  A 
horse  that  walks  at  two  miles  and  a  half  an  hour,  plough- 
ing, will  work  twelve  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four.  A 
horse  that  runs  in  the  mail  at  twelve  miles  an  hour, 
works  an  hour  and  a  half  and  rests  twenty-two  and  a 
half;  and  with  all  that  rest  soon  breaks  down.  The  bear- 
ing of  all  this  is,  that  it  is  time  to  stop  ;  and  so,  my  long 
black  goosequill,  lie  down  ! 


CHAPTER   IV. 


CONCERNING  WORK   AND   PLAY. 


lOBODY  likes  to  work.  I  should  never 
work  at  all  if  I  could  help  it.  I  mean,  when 
I  say  that  nobody  likes  work,  that  nobody 
&*£^5^54J!  does  so  whose  tastes  and  likings  are  in  a 
natural  and  unsophisticated  condition.  Some  men,  by  long 
training  and  by  the  force  of  various  circumstances,  do,  I 
am  aware,  come  to  have  an  actual  craving,  a  morbid  ap- 
petite, for  work  ;  but  it  is  a  morbid  appetite,  just  as  truly 
as  that  which  impels  a  lady  to  eat  chalk,  or  a  child  to 
prefer  pickles  to  sugar-plums.  Or  if  my  reader  quarrels 
with  the  word  'morbid,  and  insists  that  a  liking  for  brisk, 
hard  work  is  a  healthy  taste  and  not  a  diseased  one,  I 
will  give  up  that  phrase,  and  substitute  for  it  the  less 
strong  one  that  a  liking  for  work  is  an  acquired  taste,  like 
that  which  leads  you  and  me,  my  friend,  to  like  bitter 
beer.  Such  a  man,  for  instance,  as  Lord  Campbell,  has 
brought  himself  to  that  state  that  I  have  no  doubt  he 
actually  enjoys  the  thought  of  the  enormous  quantity  of 
work  which  he  goes  through ;  but  when  he  does  so  he 
does  a  thing  as  completely  out  of  nature  as  is  done  by  the 
Indian  fakir,  who  feels  a  gloomy  satisfaction  as  he  reflects 
on  the  success  with  which  he  has  laboured  to  weed  out  all 


102  CONCERNING 

but  bitterness  from  life.  I  know  quite  well  that  we  can 
bring  ourselves  to  such  a  state  of  mind  that  we  shall  feel 
a  sad  sort  of  pleasure  in  thinking  how  much  we  are 
taking  out  of  ourselves,  and  how  much  we  are  deny- 
ing ourselves.  What  college  man  who  ever  worked  him- 
self to  death  but  knows  well  the  curious  condition  of 
mind  ?  He  begins  to  toil,  induced  by  the  love  of  knowl- 
edge, or  by  the  desire  of  distinction  ;  but  after  he  has 
toiled  on  for  some  weeks  or  months,  there  gradually  steals 
in  such  a  feeling  as  that  which  I  have  been  describing. 
I  have  felt  it  myself,  and  so  know  all  about  it.  I  do 
not  believe  that  any  student  ever  worked  harder  than  I 
did.  And  I  remember  well  the  gloomy  kind  of  satisfac- 
tion I  used  to  feel,  as  all  day,  and  much  of  the  night,  I 
bent  over  my  books,  in  thinking  how  much  I  was  fore- 
going. The  sky  never  seemed  so  blue  and  so  inviting  as 
when  I  looked  at  it  for  a  moment  now  and  then,  and  so 
back  to  the  weary  page.  And  never  did  the  green  wood- 
land walks  picture  themselves  to  my  mind  so  freshly  and 
delightfully  as  when  I  thought  of  them  as  of  something 
which  I  was  resolutely  denying  myself.  I  remember 
even  now,  when  I  went  to  bed  at  half-past  four  in  the 
morning,  having  risen  at  half-past  six  the  previous  morn- 
ing, and  having  done  nearly  as  much  for  months,  how  I 
was  positively  pleased  to  see  in  the  glass  the  ghastly 
cheek-,  and  the  deep  black  circles  round  the  eyes.  There 
is,  I  repeat,  a  certain  pleasure  in  thinking  one  is  working 
desperately  hard,  and  taking  a  great  deal  out  of  oneself; 
but  it  is  a  pleasure  which  is  unnatural,  which  is  factitious, 
which  is  morbid.  It  is  not  the  healthy,  unsophisticated 
human  animal.  We  know,  of  course,  that  Lord  Chief- 
Justice  Ellenborough  said,  when  he  was  about  seventy, 
that  the  greatest  pleasure  that  remained  to  him  in  life, 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  103 

was  to  hear  a  young  barrister,  named  Follett,  argue  a 
point  of  law ;  but  it  was  a  highly  artificial  state  of  mind, 
the  result  of  very  long  training,  which  enabled  the  emi- 
nent judge  to  enjoy  the  gratification  which  he  described  : 
and  to  ordinary  men  a  legal  argument,  however  ably  con- 
ducted, would  be  sickeningly  tiresome.  If  you  want  to 
know  the  natural  feeling  of  humanity  towards  work,  see 
what  children  think  of  it.  Is  not  the  task  always  a  dis- 
agreeable necessity,  even  to  the  very  best  boy  ?  How  I 
used  to  hate  mine  !  Of  course,  my  friendly  reader,  if  you 
knew  who  I  am,  I  should  talk  of  myself  less  freely ;  but 
as  you  do  not  know,  and  could  not  possibly  guess,  I  may 
ostensively  do  what  every  man  tacitly  does,  make  my- 
self the  standard  of  average  human  nature,  the  first  me- 
ridian from  which  all  distances  and  deflections  are  to  be 
measured.  "Well,  my  feeling  towards  my  school  tasks  was 
nothing  short  of  hatred.  And  yet  I  was  not  a  dunce. 
No,  I  was  a  clever  boy.  I  was  at  the  head  of  all  my 
classes.  Not  more  than  once  or  twice  have  I  competed 
at  school  or  college  for  a  prize  which  I  did  not  get.  And 
I  hated  work  all  the  while.  Therefore  I  believe  that  all 
unsophisticated  mortals  hate  it.  I  have  seen  silly  parents 
trying  to  get  their  children  to  say  that  they  liked  school- 
time  better  than  holiday-time  ;  that  they  liked  work  bet- 
ter than  play.  I  have  seen,  with  joy,  manly  little  fellows 
repudiating  the  odious  and  unnatural  sentiment;  and  de- 
claring manfully  that  they  preferred  cricket  to  Ovid. 
And  if  any  boy  ever  tells  you  that  he  would  rather  learn 
his  lessons  than  go  out  to  the  play-ground,  beware  of 
that  boy.  Either  his  health  is  drooping,  and  his  mind  be- 
coming prematurely  and  unnaturally  developed ;  or  he  is 
a  little  humbug.  He  is  an  impostor.  He  is  seeking  to 
obtain  credit  under  false  pretences. ,  Depend  upon  it,  un- 


104  cox<t.i;mx<; 

less  it  really  be  that  he  is  a  poor  little  spiritless  man,  de- 
ficient in  nerve  and  muscle,  and  unhealthily  precocious 
in  intellect,  he  has  in  him  the  elements  of  a  sneak  ;  and 
he  wants  nothing  but  time  to  ripen  him  into  a  pickpocket, 
a  swindler,  a  horse-dealer,  or  a  British  Bank  director. 

Every  one,  then,  naturally  hates  work,  and  loves  its  ! 
opposite,  play.  And  let  it  be  remarked  that  not  idle- 
ness, but  play,  is  the  opposite  of  work.  But  some  peo- 
ple are  so  happy,  as  to  be  able  to  idealize  their  work 
into  play  ;  or  they  have  so  great  a  liking  for  their  work 
that  they  do  not  feel  their  work  as  effort,  and  thus  the 
element  is  eliminated  which  makes  work  a  pain.  How 
I  envy  those  human  beings  who  have  such  enjoyment  in  / 
their  work,  that  it  ceases  to  be  work  at  all !  There  is 
my  friend  Mr.  Tinto  the  painter ;  he  is  never  so  happy 
as  when  he  is  busy  at  his  canvas,  drawing  forth  from  it 
forms  of  beauty :  he  is  up  at  his  work  almost  as  soon 
as  he  has  daylight  for  it ;  he  paints  all  day,  and  he 
is  sorry  when  the  twilight  compels  him  to  stop.  He 
delights  in  his  work,  and  so  his  work  becomes  play.  I 
suppose  the  kind  of  work  which,  in  the  case  of  ordinary 
men,  never  ceases  to  be  work,  never  loses  the  conscious 
feeling  of  strain  and  effort,  is  that  of  composition.  A 
great  poet,  possibly,  may  find  much  pleasure  in  writing, 
and  there  have  been  exceptional  men  who  said  they 
never  were  so  happy  as  when  they  had  the  pen  in  their 
hand :  Biiflbn,  I  think,  tells  us  that  once  he  wrote  for 
fourteen  hours  :it  a  stretch,  and  all  that  time  was  in  a 
state  of  positive  enjoyment ;  and  Lord  Maeaulay,  in  the 
preface  to  his  recently  published  Speeches,  assures  us 
that  the  writing  of  his  History  is  the  occupation  and  the 
happiness  of  his  life.  Well,  I  am  glad  to  hear  it. 
Ordinary  mortals   cannot   sympathize   with   the  feeling. 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  105 

To  them  composition  is  simply  hard  work,  and  hard  work 
is  pain.  Of  course,  even  commonplace  men  have  occa- 
sionally had  their  moments  of  inspiration,  when  thoughts 
present  themselves  vividly,  and  clothe  themselves  in 
felicitous  expressions,  without  much  or  any  conscious 
effort.  But  these  seasons  are  short  and  far  between: 
and  although  while  they  last  it  becomes  comparatively 
pleasant  to  write,  it  never  becomes  so  pleasant  as  it 
would  be  to  lay  down  the  pen,  to  lean  back  in  the  easy- 
chair,  to  take  up  the  Times  or  Fraser,  and  enjoy  the 
luxury  of  being  carried  easily  along  that  track  of  thought 
which  costs  its  writer  so  much  labour  to  pioneer  through 
the  trackless  jungle  of  the  world  of  mind.  Ah,  how 
easy  it  is  to  read  what  it  was  so  difficult  to  write  !  There 
is  all  the  difference  between  running  down  from  London 
to  Manchester  by  the  railway  after  it  has  been  made, 
and  of  making  the  railway  from  London  to  Manchester. 
You,  my  intelligent  reader,  who  begin  to  read  a  chapter 
of  Mr.  Froude's  eloquent  History,  and  get  on  with  it  so 
fluently,  are  like  the  snug  old  gentleman,  travelling- 
capped,  railway-rugged,  great-coated,  and  plaided,  who 
leans  back  in  the  corner  of  the  softly-cushioned  carriage 
as  it  flits  over  Chat-moss ;  while  the  writer  of  the  chap- 
ter is  like  George  Stephenson,  toiling  month  after  month 
to  make  the  track  along  which  you  speed,  in  the  face  of 
difficulties  and  discouragements  which  you  never  think 
of.  And  so  I  say  it  may  sometimes  be  somewhat  easy 
and  pleasant  to  write,  but  never  so  easy  and  pleasant  as 
it  is  not  to  write.  The  odd  thing,  too,  about  the  work  of 
the  pen  is  this  :  that  it  is  often  done  best  by  the  men 
who  like  it  least  and  shrink  from  it  most,  and  that  it  is 
often  the  most  laborious  writing  along  which  the  reader's 
mind  glides  most  easily  and  pleasurably.     It  is  not  so  in 


10G  CONCERNING 

other  matters.  As  the  general  rule,  no  man  does  well 
the  work  which  he  dislikes.  No  man  will  be  a  good 
preacher  who  dislikes  preaching.  No  man  will  be  a 
good  anatomist  who  hates  dissecting.  Sir  Charles 
Napier,  it  must  be  confessed,  was  a  great  soldier,  though 
he  hated  fighting ;  and  as  for  writing,  some  men  have 
been  the  best  writers  who  hated  writing,  and  who  would 
never  have  penned  a  line  but  under  the  pressure  of 
necessity.  There  is  John  Foster ;  what  a  great  writer 
he  was  :  and  yet  his  biography  tells  us,  in  his  own  words, 
too,  scores  of  times,  how  he  shrunk  away  from  the  in- 
tense mental  effort  of  composition ;  how  he  abhorred  it 
and  dreaded  it,  though  he  did  it  so  admirably  well. 
There  is  Coleridge :  how  that  great  mind  ran  to  waste, 
because  Coleridge  shrank  from  the  painful  labour  of  for- 
mal composition :  and  so  Christabel  must  have  remained 
unfinished,  save  for  the  eloquent  labours  of  that  greatest, 
wisest,  most  original,  and  least  commonplace  of  men,  Dr. 
Martin  Farquhar  Tupper :  and  so,  instead  of  volumes 
of  hoarded  wisdom  and  wit,  we  have  but  the  fading 
remembrances  of  hours  of  marvellous  talk.  I  do  not  by 
any  means  intend  to  assert  that  there  are  not  worse 
things  than  work,  even  than  very  hard  work ;  but  I  say 
that  work,  as  work,  is  a  bad  thing.  It  may  once  have 
been  otherwise,  but  the  curse  is  in  it  now.  We  do  it 
because  we  must :  it  is  our  duty :  we  live  by  it ;  it  is  the 
Creator's  intention  that  we  should ;  it  makes  us  enjoy 
leisure  and  recreation  and  rest;  it  stands  between  us  and 
the  pure  misery  of  idleness ;  it  is  dignified  and  honoura- 
ble ;  it  is  the  soil  and  the  atmosphere  in  which  grow 
cheerfulness,  hopefulness,  health  of  body  and  mind. 
But  still,  if  we  could  get  all  these  good  ends  without  it, 
we  should  be  glad.     We  do  not  care  for  exertion  for  its 


WORK   AND  PLAY.  107 

own  sake.  Even  Mr.  Kingsley  does  not  love  the  north- 
east wind  for  itself,  but  because  of  the  good  things  that 
come  with  it  and  from  it.  "Work  is  not  an  end  in  itself. 
'The  end  of  work,'  said  Aristotle,  'is  to  enjoy  leisure;' 
or,  as  The  Minstrel  hath  it,  'the  end  and  the  reward  of 
toil  is  rest.'  I  do  not  wish  to  draw  from  too  sacred  a 
source  the  confirmation  of  these  summer-day  fancies  ; 
but  I  think,  as  I  write,  of  the  descriptions  which  we  find 
in  a  certain  Volume  of  the  happiness  of  another  world. 
Has  not  many  an  over-wrought  and  wearied-out  worker 
found  comfort  in  an  assurance  of  which  I  shall  here 
speak  no  further,  that  'There  remaineth  a  rest  to  the 
people  of  God  ?  ' 

And  so,  my  reader,  if  it  be  true,  that  nobody,  any- 
where, would  (in  his  sober  senses)  work  if  he  could  help 
it,  how  especially  true  is  that  great  principle  on  this  beau- 
tiful July  day  !  It  is  truly  a  day  on  which  to  do  nothing. 
I  am  here,  far  in  the  country,  and  when  I  this  moment 
went  to  the  window,  and  looked  out  upon  a  rich  summer 
landscape,  everything  seemed  asleep.  The  sky  is  sap- 
phire-blue, without  a  cloud ;  the  sun  is  pouring  clown  a 
flood  of  splendour  upon  all  things ;  there  is  not  a  breath 
stirring,  hardly  the  twitter  of  a  bird.  All  the  air  is  filled 
with  the  fragrance  of  the  young  clover.  The  landscape 
is  richly  wooded ;  I  never  saw  the  trees  more  thickly 
covered  with  leaves,  and  now  they  are  perfectly  still.  I 
am  writing  north  of  the  Tweed,  and  the  horizon  is  of 
blue  hills,  which  some  southrons  would  call  mountains. 
The  wheat-fields  are  beginning  to  have  a  little  of  the 
harvest-tinge,  and  they  contrast  beautifully  with  the  deep 
green  of  the  hedge-rows.  The  roses  are  almost  over,  but 
I  can  see  plenty  of  honeysuckle  in  the  hedges  still,  and  a 
perfect  blaze  of  it  has  covered  one  projecting  branch  of  a 


108  CONCERNING 

young  oak.  I  am  looking  at  a  little  well-shaven  green 
(I  shall  not  call  it  a  lawn,  because  it  is  not  one)  ;  it  has 
not  been  mown  for  nearly  a  fortnight,  and  it  is  perfectly 
white  with  daisies.  Beyond,  at  a  very  short  distance, 
through  the  branches  of  many  oaks,  I  can  see  a  gable  of 
the  church,  and  a  few  large  gravestones  shining  white 
among  the  green  grass  and  leaves.  I  do  not  find  all 
these  things  any  great  temptation  now,  for  I  have  got 
interested  in  my  work,  and  I  like  to  write  of  them. 
But  I  found  it  uncommonly  hard  to  sit  down  this  morn- 
ing to  my  work.  Indeed,  I  found  it  impossible,  and  thus 
it  is  that  at  five  o'clock  p.  M.,  I  have  got  no  further  than 
the  present  line.  I  had  quite  resolved  that  this  morning 
I  would  sit  doggedly  clown  to  my  essay,  in  which  I  have 
really  (though  the  reader  may  find  it  hard  to  believe  it) 
got  something  to  say ;  but  when  I  walked  out  after 
breakfast,  I  felt  that  all  nature  was  saying  that  this  was 
not  a  day  for  work.  Come  forth  and  look  at  me,  seemed 
the  message  breathed  from  her  beautiful  face.  And  then 
I  thought  of  "Wordsworth's  ballad,  which  sets  out  so 
pleasing  an  excuse  for  idleness  :  — 

Books!  'tis  a  dull  and  endless  strife, 

Come,  hear  the  woodland  linnet! 
How  sweet  his  music!  on  my  life 

There's  more  of  wisdom  in  it. 

And  hark  !  how  blithe  the  throstle  sings! 

Id',  too,  is  no  mean  preacher: 
Come  forth  into  the  light  of  things, 

Let  Nature  be  your  teacher. 

She  has  a  world  of  ready  wealth, 

Our  minds  and  hearts  to  bless, — 
Spontaneous  wisdom  breathed  by  health, 

Troth  breathed  by  cheerfulness. 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  109 

One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood, 

.May  teach  you  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good, 

Than  all  the  sages  can ! 

Just  at  my  gate,  the  man  who  keeps  in  order  the  roads 
of  the  parish  Avas  hard  at  work.  How  pleasant,  I  thought, 
to  work  amid  the  pure  air  and  the  sweet-smelling  clover ! 
And  how  pleasant,  too,  to  have  work  to  do  of  such  a  na- 
ture that  when  you  go  to  it  every  morning  you  can  make 
quite  sure  that,  barring  accident,  you  will  accomplish  a 
certain  amount  before  the  sun  shall  set ;  while  as  for  the 
man  whose  work  is  that  of  the  brain  and  the  pen,  he 
never  can  be  certain  in  the  morning  how  much  his  day's 
labour  may  amount  to.  He  may  sit  down  at  his  desk, 
spread  out  his  paper,  have  his  ink  in  the  right  place,  and 
his  favourite  pen,  and  yet  he  may  find  that  he  cannot  get 
on,  that  thoughts  will  not  come,  that  his  mind  is  utterly 
sterile,  that  he  cannot  see  his  way  through  his  subject, 
or  that  if  he  can  produce  anything  at  all  it  is  poor  mis- 
erable stuff,  whose  poorness  no  one  knows  better  than 
himself.  And  so,  after  hours  of  effort  and  discourage- 
ment, he  may  have  to  lay  his  work  aside,  having  accom- 
plished nothing,  having  made  no  progress  at  all  —  wea- 
ried, stupified,  disheartened,  thinking  himself  a  mere 
blockhead.  Thus  musing,  I  approached  the  roadman. 
I  inquired  how  his  wife  and  children  were.  I  asked 
how  he  liked  the  new  cottage  he  had  lately  moved  into. 
Well,  he  said,  but  it  was  far  from  his  work :  he  had  walked 
eight  miles  and  a  half  that  morning  to  his  work ;  he  had 
to  walk  the  same  distance  home  again  in  the  evening  after 
labouring  all  day ;  and  for  this  his  wages  were  thirteen 
shillings  a-week,  with  a  deduction  for  such  days  as  he 
might  be  unable  to  work.     He  did  not  mention  all  this 


110  CONCERNING 

by  way  of  complaint ;  he  was  comfortably  off,  he  said ; 
he  should  be  thankful  he  was  so  much  better  off  than 
many.  He  had  got  a  little  pony  lately  very  cheap, 
which  would  carry  himself  and  his  tools  to  and  from  his 
employment,  and  that  would  be  very  nice.  In  all  likeli- 
hood, my  friendly  reader,  the  roadman  would  not  have 
been  so  communicative  to  you  ;  but  as  for  me,  it  is  my 
duty  and  my  happiness  to  be  the  sympathizing  friend  of 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  this  parish,  and  it  pleases 
me  much  to  believe  that  there  is  no  one  throughout  its 
little  population  who  does  not  think  of  me  and  speak  to 
me  as  a  friend.  I  talked  a  little  longer  to  the  roadman 
about  parish  affairs.  We  mutually  agreed  in  re- 
marking the  incongruous  colours  of  a  pair  of  ponies 
which  passed  in  a  little  phaeton,  of  which  one  was  cream- 
coloured  and  the  other  dapple-grey.  The  phaeton  came 
from  a  friend's  house  a  little  way  off,  and  I  wondered  if 
it  were  going  to  the  railway  to  bring  some  one  who  (I 
knew)  was  expected ;  for  in  such  simple  matters  do  we 
simple  country  folk  find  something  to  maintain  the  inter- 
est of  life.  I  need  not  go  on  to  describe  what  other 
tiling-;  I  did ;  how  I  looked  with  pleasure  at  a  field  of 
oats  and  another  of  potatoes  in  which  I  am  concerned, 
and  held  several  short  conversations  with  passers-by ; 
but  the  result  of  the  whole  was  a  conviction  that,  after 
all,  it  was  best  to  set  to  work  at  once,  though  well  re- 
membering how  much  by  indoor  work  in  the  country 
on  Bueh  a  day  as  this  one  is  missing.  And  the  thought 
of  the  roadman's  seventeen  miles  of  walking,  in  addi- 
tion to  his  day's  work,  was  something  of  a  reproof  and 
a  stimulus.  And  thus,  determined  at  least  to  make  a 
beginning,  did  I  write  this  much  Concerning  Work  ami 
Play. 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  Ill 

I  find  a  great  want  in  all  that  is  written  on  the  sub- 
ject of  recreation.  People  tell  me  that  I  need  recreation, 
that  I  cannot  do  without  it,  that  mind  and  body  alike  de- 
mand it.  I  know  all  that,  but  they  do  not  tell  me  how  to 
recreate  myself.  They  fight  shy  of  all  practical  details. 
Now  it  is  just  these  I  want.  All  working  men  must 
have  play  ;  but  what  sort  of  play  can  we  have  ?  I  envy 
schoolboys  their  facility  of  being  amused,  and  of  finding 
recreation  which  entirely  changes  the  current  of  their 
thoughts.  A  boy  flying  his  kite  or  whipping  his  top  is 
pursued  by  no  remembrance  of  the  knotty  line  of  Virgil 
which  puzzled  him  a  little  while  ago  in  school ;  but  when 
the  grown-up  man  takes  his  sober  afternoon  walk  —  per- 
haps the  only  relaxation  which  he  has  during  the  day  — 
he  is  thinking  still  of  the  book  which  he  is  writing  and 
of  the  cares  which  he  has  left  at  home.  Then,  and  all 
the  worse  for  myself,  I  can  feel  no  interest  in  flying  a 
kite,  or  rigging  and  sailing  a  little  ship,  or  making  a  mill- 
wheel  and  setting  it  going,  or  in  marbles,  or  ball,  or  run- 
ning races,  or  playing  at  leap-frog.  And  even  if  they 
did  feel  interest  in  athletic  sports,  the  lungs  and  sinews 
of  most  educated  men  of  middle  age  would  forbid  their 
joining  in  them.  I  need  not  therefore  suggest  the  doubt 
which  would  probably  be  cast  upon  a  man's  sanity  were  he 
found  eagerly  knuckling  down  (how  stiff  it  would  soon 
make  him),  or  wildly  chasing  the  flying  football,  or  making 
a  rush  at  a  friend  and  taking  a  flying  leap  over  his  head. 
Now  what  recreation,  I  want  to  know,  is  open  to  the 
middle-aged  man  of  literary  tastes  ?  Shooting,  coursing, 
fishing,  says  one  ;  but  he  does  not  care  for  shooting,  or 
coursing,  or  fishing.  Gardening,  says  another;  but  he 
does  not  care  for  gardening.  Watching  ferns,  caterpil- 
lars, frogs,  and  other  '  common  objects  of  the  country ; ' 


112  CONCERNING 

well,  but  he  lives  in  town,  and  if  lie  did  not,  he  does  not 
feel  the  least  interest  in  ferns  and  caterpillars.  Music  is 
suggested  ;  well,  he  has  no  great  ear,  and  he  may  dwell 
where  he  can  have  little  or  none  of  it.  Society !  pray 
what  is  society  ?  No  doubt  the  conversation  of  intelli- 
gent men  and  women  is  a  most  grateful  and  stimulating 
recreation  ;  but  is  there  any  recreation  in  dreary  dinner- 
parties, where  one  listens  to  the  twaddle  of  silly  old  gen- 
tlemen and  emptier  young  ones,  or  in  the  hot-house  at- 
mosphere and  crush  of  most  evening  parties  ?  These 
are  not  play ;  they  are  very  hard  work,  and  a  treadmill 
work  producing  no  beneficial  results,  but  rather  provoca- 
tive of  all  manner  of  ill-tempers.  Then,  no  doubt,  there 
is  most  agreeable  recreation  for  some  people  in  the  ex- 
citement of  a  polka  or  gallop  and  its  attendant  light  and 
cheerful  talk,  not  to  say  flirtation  ;  but  then  our  repre- 
sentative man  has  got  beyond  these  things :  these  are  for 
young  people  —  he  is  married  now  and  sobered  down ; 
he  probably  was  never  the  man  to  make  himself  emi- 
nently agreeable  in  such  a  scene,  and  he  is  less  so  now 
than  ever.  Besides,  if  play  be  something  from  which 
you  are  to  return  with  renewed  strength  and  interest  to 
work,  I  doubt  whether  the  ball-room  is  the  place  where 
it  is  to  be  found.  Late  hours,  a  feverish  atmosphere, 
and  excessive  exercise,  tend  to  morning  slumbers,  head- 
ache-, crossness,  and  laziness.  To  find  dancing  which 
answers  the  end  of  recreation,  we  must  go  to  less  fash- 
ionable places.  I  like  the  pictures  which  Goldsmith  gives 
us  of  the  sunny  summer  evenings  of  France,  where  the 
whole  population  of  the  village  danced  to  his  flute  in  the 
shade ;  and  even  the  soured  tinkle  Harold  melted  some- 
what into  sympathy  with  the  Spanish  peasants  as  they 
twirled  their  castanets  in  the  twilight.     Southey's  picture 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  113 

is  a  pretty  one,  but  its  description  sounds  somewhat  un- 
real: 

But  peace  was  on  the  Cottage,  and  the  fold 

From  Court  intrigue,  from  bickering  faction  far: 

Beneath  the  chestnut-tree  love's  tale  was  told, 

And  to  the  tinkling  of  the  light  guitar, 

Sweet  stooped  the  western  sun,  sweet  rose  the  evening  starT 

Nor  let  it  be  fancied  that  such  a  scene  cannot  be- 
represented  except  in  countries  to  which  distance  and 
strangeness  give  their  interest.  This  very  season,  on  a 
beautiful  summer  evening,  I  saw  a  happy  party  of  eighty 
country  folk  dancing  upon  a  greener  little  bit  of  turf  than 
Goldsmith  ever  saw  in  France.  And  I  wished  such 
things  were  more  common  ;  though  the  grave  Saxon 
spirit,  equal  to  the  enjoyment  of  such  gaiety  now  and 
then,  might  perhaps  flag  under  it  did  it  come  too  often. 
But  on  the  occasion  to  which  I  refer,  there  was  no  lack 
of  innocent  cheerfulness ;  the  enjoyment  seemed  real ; 
and  though  there  were  no  castanets  and  no  guitars,  but 
a  fiddle  for  music  and  reels  for  dances,  there  were  as 
pretty  faces  and  as  graceful  figures  among  the  girls,  I 
warrant,  as  you  would  find  from  the  Rhine  to  the 
Pyrenees. 

But,  to  resume  the  somewhat  ravelled  thread  of  our 
discussion,  —  if  a  man  has  come  to  this,  that  he  can  feel  no 
interest  in  such  recreations  as  those  which  we  have  men- 
tioned, what  is  he  to  do  ?  And  let  it  be  remembered  that 
I  am  putting  no  fanciful  case  :  be  sorry,  if  you  will,  for  the 
man  who  from  taste  and  habit  cannot  be  easily  amused  ; 
but  remember  that  such  is  the  lot  of  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  the  intellectual  labourers  of  the  race.  And  what 
is  such  a  man  to  do  ?  After  using  his  eyes  and  exerting 
his  brain  all  the  forenoon  in  reading  and  writing  by  way 

8 


114  CONCERNING 

of  work,  must  he  just  use  his  eyes  and  exert  his  brain 
all  the  evening  in  reading  and  writing  by  way  of  play? 
Has  it  come  to  this,  that  he  must  find  the  only  recrea- 
tion that  remains  for  him  in  the  Times,  the  Quarterly 
Review,  and  Fraser's  Magazine  ?  All  these  things  are 
indeed  excellent  in  their  way.  They  relax  and  interest 
the  mind  :  but  then  they  wear  out  the  eyes,  they  con- 
tract the  chest,  and  render  the  muscles  flabby,  they  ruin 
the  ganglionic  apparatus,  they  make  the  mind  but  un- 
make the  body.  Now  that  will  not  do.  Does  nothing 
remain,  in  the  way  of  play,  but  the  afternoon  walk  or 
drive :  the  vacant  period  between  dinner  and  tea,  when 
no  one  works,  notwithstanding  Johnson's  warning,  that 
he  who  resolves  that  he  cannot  work  between  dinner  and 
tea,  will  probably  proceed  to  the  conclusion  that  he  can- 
not work  between  breakfast  and  dinner ;  a  little  quiet 
gossip  with  your  wife,  a  little  romping  with  your  chil- 
dren, if  you  have  a  wife  and  children ;  and  then  back 
again  to  the  weary  books  ?  Think  of  the  elder  Disraeli, 
who  looked  at  printed  pages  so  long,  that  by  and  bye, 
wherever  he  looked,  he  saw  nothing  but  printed  pages, 
and  then  became  blind.  Think  what  poor  specimens  of 
the  human  animal,  physically,  many  of  our  noblest  and 
ablest  men  are.  Do  not  men,  by  their  beautiful,  touch- 
ing, and  far-reaching  thoughts,  reach  the  heart  and  form 
the  mind  of  thousands,  who  could  not  run  a  hundred 
yards  without  panting  for  breath,  who  could  not  jump 
over  a  five-feet  wall  though  a  mad  bull  were  after  them, 
who  could  not  dig  in  the  garden  for  ten  minutes  without 
having  their  brain  throbbing  and  their  entire  frame  trem- 
bling, who  could  not  carry  in  a  sack  of  coals  though  they 
should  never  see  a  fire  again,  who  could  never  find  a 
(lav's  employment  as  porters,  labourers,  grooms,  or  any- 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  115 

thing  but  tailors  ?  Educated  and  cultivate.]  men,  I  tell 
you  that  you  make  a  terrible  mistake  ;  and  a  mistake 
which,  before  the  end  of  the  twentieth  century,  will  sadly 
deteriorate  the  Anglo-Saxon  race.  You  make  your  rec- 
reation purely  mental.  You  give  a  little  play  to  your 
minds,  after  their  day's  work ;  but  you  give  no  play  to 
your  eyes,  to  your  brains,  to  your  hearts,  to  your  diges- 
tion, —  in  short  to  your  bodies.  And  therefore  you  grow 
weak,  unmuscular,  nervous,  dyspeptic,  near-sighted,  out- 
of-breath,  neuralgic,  pressure-on-the-brain,  thin-haired 
men.  And  in  time,  not  only  does  all  the  train  of  evils 
that  follows  your  not  providing  proper  recreation  for 
your  physical  nature,  come  miserably  to  affect  your 
spirits  ;  but,  besides  that,  it  comes  to  jaundice  and  per- 
vert and  distort  all  your  views  of  men  and  things.  I 
have  heard  of  those  who,  though  suffering  almost  cease- 
less pain,  could  yet  think  hopefully  of  the  prospects  of 
humanity,  and  take  an  unprejudiced  view  of  some  polit- 
ical question  that  appealed  strongly  to  prejudice,  and  give 
kindly  sympathy  and  sound  advice  to  a  poor  man  who 
came  to  seek  advice  in  some  little  trouble  which  is  great 
to  him.  But  I  fear  that  in  the  majority  of  instances,  the 
human  being  whose  liver  is  in  a  bad  way,  whose  diges- 
tion is  ruined,  or  even  who  is  suffering  from  violent 
toothache,  is  prone  to  snub  the  servants,  to  box  the  chil- 
dren's ears,  to  think  that  Britain  is  going  to  destruction, 
and  that  the  world  is  coming  to  an  end. 

It  may  be  said,  that  the  class  of  intellectual  work- 
ers have  their  yearly  holiday.  August  and  September 
in  each  year  bring  with  them  the  '  Long  Vacation.' 
And  it  is  well,  indeed,  that  most  men  whose  work  is 
brain-work  have  that  blessed  period  of  relief,  wherein, 
amid  the  Swiss  snows,  or  the  Highland  heather,  or  out 


116  CONCEENING 

upon  the  Mediterranean  waves,  they  seek  to  re-invigorate 
the  jaded  body  and  mind,  and  to  lay  in  a  store  of  health 
and  strength  with  which  to  face  the  winter  work  a<*ain. 
But  this  is  not  enough.  A  man  might  just  as  well  say 
that  he  would  eat  in  August  or  September  all  the  food 
which  is  to  support  him  through  the  year,  as  think  in 
that  time  to  take  the  whole  year's  recreation,  the  whole 
year's  play,  in  one  bonne  louche.  Recreation  must  be  a 
daily  thing.  Every  day  must  have  its  play,  as  well  as 
its  work.  There  is  much  sound,  practical  sense  in  Sir 
Thomas  More's  Utopia;  and  nowhere  sounder  than 
where  he  tells  us  that  in  his  model  country  he  would 
have  '  half  the  day  allotted  for  work,  and  half  for  honest 
recreation.'  Every  day,  bringing,  as  it  does,  work  to 
every  man  who  is  worth  his  salt  in  this  world,  ought 
likewise  to  bring  its  play :  play  which  will  turn  the 
thoughts  into  quite  new  and  cheerful  channels  ;  which 
will  recreate  the  body  as  well  as  the  mind  ;  and  tell  me, 
Great  Father  of  Waters,  to  whom  Rasselas  appealed 
upon  a  question  of  equal  difficulty,  —  or  tell  me,  anybody 
else,  what  that  play  shall  be !  Practically,  in  the  case 
of  most  educated  men,  of  most  intellectual  workers,  heavy 
reading  and  writing  stand  for  work,  and  light  reading 
and  writing  stand  for  play. 

I  3an  well  imagine  what  a  delightful  thing  it  must  be 
for  a  toil-worn  barrister  to  throw  briefs,  and  cases,  and 
reports  aside,  and  quitting  the  pestilential  air  of  West- 
minster Hall,  laden  with  odours  from  the  Thames  which 
are  not  the  least  like  those  of  Araby  the  Blest,  to  set  off 
to  the  Highlands  for  a  few  weeks  among  the  moors.  No 
schoolboy  at  holiday-time  is  lighter-hearted  than  he,  as 
he  settles  down  into  his  comer  in  that  fearfully  fast  ex- 
press train  on  the  Great  Northern  Railway.     And  when 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  117 

he  reaches  his  box  in  the  North  at  last,  what  a  fresh  and 
happy  sensation  it  must  be  to  get  up  in  the  morning  in 
that  pure,  unbreathed  air,  with  the  feeling  that  he  has 
nothing  to  do,  —  nothing,  at  any  rate,  except  what  he 
chooses ;  and  after  the  deliberately-eaten  breakfast,  to 
saunter  forth  with  the  delightful  sense  of  leisure,  —  to 
know  that  he  has  time  to  breathe  and  think  after  the 
ceaseless  hurry  of  the  past  months,  —  and  to  know  that 
nothing  will  go  wrong  although  he  should  sit  down  on 
the  mossy  parapet  of  the  little  one-arched  bridge  that 
spans  the  brawling  mountain-stream,  and  there  rest,  and 
muse,  and  dream  just  as  long  as  he  likes.  Two  or  three 
such  men  come  to  this  neighbourhood  yearly  ;  and  I  en- 
joy the  sight  of  them,  they  look  so  happy.  Every  little 
thing,  if  they  indeed  be  genial,  true,  unstiffened  men,  is 
a  source  of  interest  to  them.  The  total  change  makes 
them  grow  rapturous  about  matters  which  we,  who  are 
quite  accustomed  to  them,  take  more  coolly.  I  think, 
when  I  look  at  them,  of  the  truthful  lines  of  Gray : 

See  the  wretch,  that  long  has  tost, 

On  the  thorny  bed  of  pain, 
At  length  repair  his  vigour  lost, 

And  breathe  and  walk  again : 

The  meanest  flowret  of  the  vale, 
The  simplest  note  that  swells  the  gale, 
The  common  sun,  the  air,  the  skies, 
To  him  are  opening  paradise. 

Equidem  invideo,  a  little.  I  feel  somewhat  vexed  when 
I  think  how  much  more  beautiful  these  pleasant  scenes 
around  me  really  are,  than  what,  by  any  effort,  I  can 
make  them  seem  to  me.  You  hard-wrought  town  folk, 
when  you  come  to  rural  regions,  have  the  advantage  of 
us  leisurely  country  people. 


118  CONCERNING 

But,  much  as  that  great  Queen's  Counsel  enjoys  his 
long  vacation's  play,  you  see  it  is  not  enough.     Look 
how  thin  his  hair  is,  how  pale  his  cheeks  are,  how  flesh- 
less    those   long   fingers,   how   unrauscular    those    arms. 
What  he   needs,  in   addition   to  the  autumn  holiday,  is 
some  bona  fide  play  every  day  of  his  life.     What  is  his 
amusement  when  in  town  ?     Why,  mainly  it  consists  of 
going  into  society,  where  he  gains  nothing  of  elasticity 
and    vigour,    but   merely   injures    his    digestive   organs. 
Why  does  he  not  rather  have  half  an  hour's  lively  bod- 
ily exercise,  —  rowing,  or  quoits,  or  tennis,  or  skating, 
or   anything    he    may    have    taste   for?      And    if  it  be 
foolish  to   take  all  the  year's  play  at  once,  as  so  many 
intellectual  workers  think  to  do,  much  more  foolish  is  it 
to  keep  all  the  play  of  life  till  the  work  is  over :  to  toil 
and  moil  at  business  through  all  the  better  years  of  our 
time  in  this  world,  in  the  hope  that  at  length  we  shall 
be  able  to  retire  from  business,  and  make  the  evening 
of  life  all  holiday,  all  play.     In  all  likelihood  the  man 
who  takes  this  course  will  never  retire  at  all,  except  into 
an  untimely  grave  ;  and  if  he  should  live  to  reach  the 
long-coveted  retreat,  he  will  find  that  all  play  and  no 
work  makes  life  quite  as  wearisome   and  as  little  enjoy- 
able as  all  work   and  no    play.     Ennui  will   make  him 
miserable  ;  and  body  and  mind,  deprived  of  their  wonted 
occupation,  will  soon  break  down.     After  very  hard  and 
long-continued  work,  there  is  indeed  a  pleasure  in  merely 
sitting  still    and  doing  nothing.      But   after    the   feeling 
of  pure    exhaustion    is    gone,   that  will  not  suffice.     A 
boy  enjoys  play,  but  he   is   miserable  in  enforced   idle- 
ness.    In  writing  about  retiring  from  the   task-Avork  of 
life,  one  naturally  thinks  of  that  letter  to  Wordsworth, 
in  which  Charles  Lamb  told  what  he  felt  when  he  was 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  119 

finally   emancipated   from    his    drudgery    in   the    India 
House  : 

I  came  home  for  ever  on  Tuesday  week.  The  incomprehensible- 
ness  of  my  condition  overwhelmed  me.  It  was  like  passing  from  life 
into  eternity.  Every  year  to  be  as  long  as  three;  that  is,  to  have 
three  times  as  much  real  time  —  time  that  is  my  own  —  in  it !  I 
wandered  about  thinking  I  was  happy,  and  feeling  I  was  not.  But 
that  tumultuousness  is  passing  off,  and  I  begin  to  understand  the 
nature  of  the  gift.  Holidays,  even  the  annual  month,  were  always 
uneasy  joys,  with  their  conscious  fugitiveness,  the  craving  after  mak- 
ing the  most  of  them.  Now,  when  all  is  holiday,  there  are  no  holi- 
days. I  can  sit  at  home,  in  rain  or  shine,  without  a  restless  impulse 
for  walkings. 

There  are  unhappy  beings  in  the  world,  who  secretly 
stand  in  fear  of  all  play,  on  the  hateful  and  wicked  no- 
tion, which  I  believe  some  men  regard  as  being  of  the 
essence  of  Christianity,  though  in  truth  it  is  its  contra- 
diction, that  everything  pleasant  is  sinful,  —  that  God 
dislikes  to  see  his  creatures  cheerful  and  happy.  I  think 
it  is  the  author  of  Friends  in  Council  who  says  some- 
thing to  the  effect,  that  many  people,  infected  with  that 
Puritan  falsehood,  slink  about  creation,  afraid  to  confess 
that  they  ever  are  enjoying  themselves.  It  is  a  sad 
thing  when  such  a  belief  is  entertained  by  even  grown- 
up men  ;  but  it  stirs  me  to  absolute  fury  when  I  know 
of  it  being  impressed  upon  poor  little  children,  to  repress 
their  natural  gaiety  of  heart.  Did  you  ever,  my  reader, 
read  that  dreary  and  preposterous  book  in  which  Thomas 
Clarkson  sought  to  show  that  Quakerism  is  not  inconsis- 
tent with  common  sense  ?  Probably  not ;  but  perhaps 
you  may  have  met  with  Jeffrey's  review  of  it.  Nothing 
short  of  a  vehement  kicking  could  relieve  my  feelings  if 
I  heard  some  sly,  money-making  old  rascal  impressing 
upon  some  merry  children  that 


120  CONCERNING 

Stillness  and  quietness  both  of  spirit  and  body  are  necessary,  as  far 
as  they  can  be  obtained.  Hence,  Quaker  children  are  rebuked  for  all 
expressions  of  anger,  as  tending  to  raise  those  feelings  which  ought  to 
be  suppressed;  a  raising  even  of  the  voice  beyond  due  bounds,  is  dis- 
couraged as  leading  to  the  disturbance  of  their  minds.  They  are 
taught  to  rise  in  the  morning  in  quietness ;  to  go  about  their  ordinary 
occupations  with  quietness;  and  with  quietness  to  retire  to  their 
beds. 

Can  you  think  of  more  complete  flying  in  the  face 
of  the  purposes  of  the  kind  Creator  ?  Is  it  not  His 
manifest  intention  that  childhood  should  he  the  time  of 
merry  laughter,  of  gaiety,  and  shouts,  and  noise  ?  There 
is  not  a  sadder  sight  than  that  of  a  little  child  premature- 
ly subdued  and  '  quiet.'  Let  me  know  of  any  drab-coat- 
ed humbug  impressing  such  ideas  on  any  child  of  mine  ; 
and  though  from  circumstances  I  cannot  personally  see 
him  put  under  the  pump,  I  know  certain  quarters  in 
which  it  is  only  needful  to  drop  a  very  faint  hint,  in 
order  to  have  him  first  pumped  upon,  and  then  tarred 
and  feathered. 

But  there  is  another  class  of  mortals,  who  are  free 
from  the  Puritan  principle,  and  who  have  no  objection 
to  amusement  for  themselves,  but  who  seem  to  have  no  no- 
tion that  their  inferiors  and  their  servants  ought  ever  to  do 
anything  but  work.  The  reader  will  remember  the  fash- 
ionable governess  in  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  who  insisted 
that  only  genteel  children  should  ever  be  permitted  to 
play.     The  well-known  lines  of  Dr.  Isaac  Watts,  — 

In  books,  or  work,  or  healthful  play, 
Let  my  first  years  be  past, — 

were  applicable,  she  maintained,  only  to  the  children  of 
families  of  the  wealthier  sort :  while  for  poor  children 
there  must  be  a  new  reading,  which  she  improvised  as 
follows :  — 


WOEK  AND  PLAY.  121 

In  work,  work,  work.     In  work  alway, 

Let  my  first  years  be  past : 
That  I  may  give,  for  every  day, 

Some  good  account  at  last. 

And  as  for  domestic  servants,  poor  creatures,  I  fear 
there  is  many  a  house  in  which  there  is  no  provision 
whatever  made  for  play  for  them.  There  can  be  no 
drearier  round  of  life  than  that  to  which  their  employers 
destine  them.  From  the  moment  they  rise,  hours  before 
any  member  of  the  family,  to  the  moment  when  they 
return  to  bed,  it  is  one  constant  push  of  sordid  labour,  — 
often  in  chambers  to  which  air  and  light  and  cheerfulness 
can  never  come.  And  if  they  ask  a  rare  holiday,  what  a 
fuss  is  made  about  it !  Now,  what  is  the  result  of  all  this  ? 
Some  poor  solitary  beings  do  actually  sink  into  the  spirit- 
less drudges  which  such  a  life  tends  to  make  them  :  but 
the  greater  number  feel  that  they  cannot  live  with  all 
work  and  no  play  ;  and  as  they  cannot  get  play  openly, 
they  get  it  secretly :  they  go  out  at  night,  when  you,  their 
mistress,  are  asleep ;  or  they  bring  in  their  friends  at 
those  unreasonable  hours  :  they  get  that  amusement  and 
recreation  on  the  sly,  and  with  the  sense  that  they  are 
doing  wrong  and  deceiving,  which  they  ought  to  be  per- 
mitted to  have  openly  and  honestly :  and  thus  you  break 
down  their  moral  principle,  you  train  them  to  cheat  you, 
you  educate  them  into  liars  and  thieves.  Of  course  your 
servants  thus  regard  you  as  their  natural  enemy :  it  is 
fair  to  take  any  advantage  you  can  of  a  gaoler :  you  are 
their  task-imposer,  their  driver,  their  gaoler,  —  anything 
but  their  friend  ;  and  if  they  can  take  advantage  of  you 
in  any  way,  they  will.     And  serve  you  right. 

I  have  known  injudicious  clergymen  who  did  all  they 
could  to  discourage  the  games  and  sports  of  their  parish- 


122  OONCEKNING 

ioners.      They  could  not  prevent  them  ;    but  one    thing 
they  did,  —  they  made   them   disreputable.     They  made 
sure  that  the  poor  man  who  ran  in  a  sack,  or  climbed  a 
greased    pole,  felt    that    thereby  he  was    forfeiting   his 
character,  perhaps  imperilling  his  salvation  :  and  so  he 
thought  that  having  gone   so  far,  he   might  go  the  full 
length :  and  thus  he  got  drunk,  got  into  a  fight,  thrashed 
his  wife,  smashed   his  crockery,  and  went  to  the  lock-up. 
How  much  better  it  would  have  been  had  the  clergyman 
sought  to  regulate  these   amusements ;    and  since  they 
would  go   on,  try  to    make  sure    that    they    should   go 
creditably   and  decently.      Thus,  poor  folk  might  have 
been  cheerful  without  having  their  conscience    stinging 
them  all  the  time  :  and  let  it  be  remembered,  that  if  you 
pervert  a  man's  moral  sense  (which  you  may  quite  readi- 
ly do  with  the  uneducated  classes)  into  fancying  that  it  is 
wicked  to  use  the  right  hand  or  the  right  foot,  while  the 
man  still  goes  on  using  the  right  hand  and  the  right  foot, 
you  do  him  an  irreparable  mischief :  you  bring  on  a  tem- 
per of  moral  recklessness  ;  and  help  him  a  considerable 
step  towards  the  gallows.     Since  people  must  have  amuse- 
ment, and  will  have  amusement ;  for  any  sake  do  not  get 
them  to  think  that  amusement  is  wicked.     You  cannot 
keep    them  from  finding  recreation  of  some   sort:    you 
may  drive  them  to  find  it  at  a  lower  level,  and  to  partake 
of  it  soured  by  remorse,  and  by  the  wretched  resolution 
that  they  will  have  it  right  or  wrong.     Instead  of  anath- 
ematizing   all    play,    sympathize   with    it    genially   and 
heartily  ;  and   say,  with  kind-hearted  old  Burton  — 

Let  the  world  have  their  may-games,  wakes,  whitsunals;  then- 
dancings  and  concerts  ;  their  puppet-shows,  hobby-horses,  tabors, 
bagpipes,  balls,  barley-breaks,  and  whatever  sports  and  recreations 
please  them  best,  provided  they  be  followed  with  discretion. 


WOKK  AND   PLAY.  123 

Let  it  be  here  remarked,  that  recreation  can  be  fully 
enjoyed  only  by  the  man  who  has  some  earnest  occupa- 
tion. The  end  of  the  work  is  to  enjoy  leisure ;  but  to 
enjoy  leisure  you  must  have  gone  through  work.  Play- 
time must  come  after  schooltime,  otherwise  it  loses  its 
savour.  Play,  after  all,  is  a  relative  thing ;  it  is  not  a 
thing  which  has  an  absolute  existence.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  play,  except  to  the  worker.  It  comes  out  by 
contrast.  Put  white  upon  white,  and  you  can  hardly  see 
it :  put  white  upon  black  and  how  plain  it  is.  Light 
your  lamp  in  the  sunshine,  and  it  is  nothing  :  you  must 
have  darkness  round  it  to  make  its  presence  felt.  And 
besides  this,  a  great  part  of  the  enjoyment  of  recreation 
consists  in  the  feeling  that  we  have  earned  it  by  previous 
hard  work.  One  goes  out  for  the  afternoon  walk  with  a 
light  heart  when  one  has  done  a  good  task  since  break- 
fast. It  is  one  thing  for  a  dawdling  idler  to  set  off  to  the 
Continent  or  to  the  Highlands,  just  because  he  is  sick  of 
everything  around  him  ;  and  quite  another  thing  when  a 
hard-wrought  man,  who  is  of  some  use  in  life,  sets  off, 
as  gay  as  a  lark,  with  the  pleasant  feeling  that  he  has 
brought  some  worthy  work  to  an  end,  on  the  self-same 
tour.  And  then  a  busy  man  finds  a  relish  in  simple  recre- 
ations ;  while  a  man  who  has  nothing  to  do,  finds  all 
things  wearisome,  and  thinks  that  life  is  '  used  up : '  it 
takes  something  quite  out  of  the  way  to  tickle  that  indu- 
rated palate  :  you  might  as  well  think  to  prick  the  hide  of 
a  hippopotamus  with  a  needle,  as  to  excite  the  interest  of 
that  blase  being  by  any  amusement  which  is  not  highly 
spiced  with  the  cayenne  of  vice.  And  that,  certainly,  has  a 
powerful  effect.  It  was  a  glass  of  water  the  wicked  old 
French  woman  was  drinking  when  she  said,  '  Oh,  that 
this  were  a  sin,  to  give  it  a  relish  ! ' 


124  CONCERNING 

So  it  is  worth  while  to  work,  if  it  were  only  that  we 
might  enjoy  play.  Thus  doth  Mr.  Heliogabalus,  my 
next  neighbour,  who  is  a  lazv  man  and  an  immense  <dut- 
ton,  walk  four  miles  every  afternoon  of  his  life.  It  is 
not  that  he  hates  exertion  less,  but  that  he  loves  dinner 
more ;  and  the  latter  eannot  be  enjoyed  unless  the  for- 
mer is  endured.  And  the  man  whose  disposition  is  the 
idlest  may  be  led  to  labour  when  he  finds  that  labour  is 
his  only  chance  of  finding  any  enjoyment  in  life.  James 
Montgomery  sums  up  much  truth  in  a  couple  of  lines  in 
his  Pelican  Island,  which  run  thus  :  — 

Labour,  the  symbol  of  man's  punishment; 
Labour,  the  secret  of  man's  happiness. 

"Why  on  earth  do  people  think  it  fine  to  be  idle  and 
useless  ?  Fancy  a  drone  superciliously  desiring  a  work- 
ing bee  to  stand  aside,  and  saying, '  out  of  the  way,  you 
miserable  drudge  ;  1  never  made  a  drop  of  honey  in  all 
my  life  !  '  I  have  observed  too,  that  some  silly  people 
are  ashamed  that  it  should  be  known  that  they  are  so 
useful  as  they  really  are,  and  take  pains  to  represent 
themselves  as  more  helpless,  ignorant,  and  incapable  than 
the  fact.  I  have  heard  a  weak  old  lady  boast  that  her 
grown-up  daughters  were  quite  unable  to  fold  up  their 
own  dresses  ;  and  that  as  for  ordering  dinner  they  had 
not  a  notion  of  such  a  thing.  This  and  many  similar 
particulars  were  stated  with  no  small  exultation,  and  that 
by  a  person  far  from  rich  and  equally  far  from  aristo- 
cratic. '  What  a  silly  old  woman  you  are,'  was  my  silent 
reflection;  'and  if  your  daughters  really  are  what  you 
represent  them,  woe  betide  the  poor  man  who  shall 
marry  one  of  the  incapable  young  noodles.'  Give  me 
the  man,  I  say,  who  can  turn  his  hand  to  all  things,  and 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  125 

who  is  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  he  can  do  so  ;  who 
can  preach  a  sermon,  nail  up  a  paling,  prune  a  fruit  tree, 
make  a  waterwheel  or  a  kite  for  his  little  boy,  write  an 
article  for  Frase?'  or  a  leader  for  the  Times  or  the  Spec- 
tator. What  a  fine,  genial,  many-sided  life  did  Sydney 
Smith  lead  at  his  Yorkshire  parish !  I  should  have 
liked,  I  own,  to  have  found  in  it  more  traces  of  the  cler- 
gyman ;  but  perhaps  the  biographer  thought  it  better  not 
to  parade  these.  And  in  the  regard  of  facing  all  difficul- 
ties with  a  cheerful  heart,  and  nobly  resolving  to  be  use- 
ful and  helpful  in  little  matters  as  well  as  big,  I  think 
that  life  was  as  good  a  sermon  as  ever  was  preached 
from  pulpit. 

I  have  already  said,  in  the  course  of  this  rambling  dis- 
cussion, that  recreation  must  be  such  as  shall  turn  the 
thoughts  into  a  new  channel,  otherwise  it  is  no  recreation 
at  all.  And  walking,  which  is  the  most  usual  physical 
exercise,  here  completely  fails.  Walking  has  grown  by 
long  habit  a  purely  automatic  act,  demanding  no  atten- 
tion :  we  think  all  the  time  we  are  walking ;  Southey 
even  read  while  he  took  his  daily  walk.  But  Southey's 
story  is  a  fearful  warning.  It  will  do  a  clergyman  no 
good  whatever  to  leave  his  desk  and  go  forth  for  his  con- 
stitutional, if  he  is  still  thinking  of  his  sermon,  and  trying 
to  see  his  way  through  the  treatment  of  his  text.  You 
see  in  Gray's  famous  poem  how  little  use  is  the  mere 
walk  to  the  contemplative  man,  how  thoroughly  it  falls 
short  of  the  end  of  play.  You  see  how  the  hectic  lad 
who  is  supposed  to  have  written  the  Elegy  employed 
himself  when  he  wandered  abroad  : 

There,  at  the  foot  of  yonder  nodding  beech, 
That  wreaths  its  old  fantastic  roots  so  high, 

His  listless  length  at  noontide  would  he  stretch, 
And  pore  upon  the  brook  that  babbles  by. 


126  CONCERNING 

Hard  by  yon  wood,  now  smiling  as  in  scorn, 
Muttering  his  wayward  fancies  he  would  rove; 

Now  drooping,  woful,  wan,  like  one  forlorn, 
Or  crazed  with  care,  or  crossed  in  hopeless  love. 

That  was  the  fashion  in  which  the  poor  fellow  took  his 
daily  recreation  and  exercise  !  His  mother  no  doubt 
packed  him  out  to  take  a  bracing  walk ;  she  ought  to 
have  set  him  to  saw  wood  for  the  fire,  or  to  dig  in  the 
garden,  or  to  clean  the  door-handles  if  he  had  muscle  for 
nothing  more.  These  things  would  have  distracted  his 
thoughts  from  their  grand  flights,  and  prevented  his 
mooning  about  in  that  listless  manner.  Of  course  while 
walking  he  was  bothering  away  about  the  poetical  trash 
he  had  in  his  desk  at  home  ;  and  so  he  knocked  up  his 
ganglionic  functions,  he  encouraged  tubercles  on  his 
luno-s,  and  came  to  furnish  matter  for  the  '  hoary-headed 
swain's '  narrative,  the  silly  fellow  ! 

Riding  is  better  than  walking,  especially  if  you  have  a 
rather  skittish  steed,  who  compels  you  to  attend  to  him 
on  pain  of  being  landed  in  the  ditch,  or  sent,  meteor-like, 
over  the  hedge.  The  elder  Disraeli  has  preserved  the 
memory  of  the  diversions  in  which  various  hard  thinkers 
found  relaxation.  Petavius,  who  wrote  a  deeply  learned 
book,  which  I  never  saw,  and  which  no  one  I  ever  saw 
ever  heard  of,  twirled  round  his  chair  for  five  minutes 
every  two  hours  that  he  was  at  work.  Samuel  Clark 
used  to  leap  over  the  tables  and  chairs.  It  was  a  rule 
which  Ignatius  Loyola  imposed  on  his  followers,  that 
after  two  hours  of  work,  the  mind  should  always  be  un- 
bent by  some  recreation.  Every  one  has  heard  of 
Paley's  remarkable  feats  of  rapid  horsemanship.  Hun- 
dreds of  times  did  that  great  man  fall  off.  The  Sultan 
Mahomet,  who  concmered  Greece,  unbent  his  mind  by 
carving  wooden   spoons.     In  all  these  things  you  see, 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  127 

kindly  reader,  that  true  recreation  was  aimed  at :  that  is, 
entire  change  of  thought  and  occupation.  Izaak  Walton, 
again,  who  sets  forth  so  pleasantly  the  praise  of  angling 
as  the  '  Contemplative  Man's  Recreation,'  wrongly  thinks 
to  recommend  the  gentle  craft  by  telling  us  that  the 
angler  may  think  all  the  while  he  plies  it.  I  do  not  care 
for  angling ;  I  never  caught  a  minnow  ;  but  still  I  joy  in 
good  old  Izaak's  pleasant  pages,  like  thousands  who  do 
not  care  a  pin  for  fishing,  but  who  feel  it  like  a  cool  re- 
treat into  green  fields  and  trees  to  turn  to  his  genial 
feeling  and  hearty  pictures  of  quiet  English  scenery. 
He,  however,  had  a  vast  opinion  of  the  joys  of  angling 
in  a  pleasant  country:  only  let  him  go  quietly  a-fish- 
ing:  — 

And  if  contentment  be  a  stranger  then, 
I'll  ne'er  look  for  it,  but  in  heaven,  again. 

And  he  repeats  with  much  approval  the  sentiments 
of  '  Jo.  Davors,  Esq.,'  in  whose  lines  we  may  see  much 
more  of  scenery  than  of  the  actual  fishing :  — 

Let  me  live  harmlessly;  and  near  the  brink 
Of  Trent  or  Avon  have  a  dwelling-place, 

Where  I  may  see  my  quill  or  cork  down  sink, 
With  eager  bite  of  perch,  or  bleak,  or  dace: 

And  on  the  world  and  my  Creator  think: 
While  some  men  strive  ill-gotten  goods  to  embrace ; 

And  others  spend  their  time  in  base  excess 

Of  wine,  or  worse,  in  war  and  wantonness. 

Let  them  that  list,  these  pastimes  still  pursue, 
And  on  such  pleasing  fancies  feed  their  fill; 

So  I  the  fields  and  meadows  green  may  view, 
And  daily  by  fresh  rivers  walk  at  will, 

Among  the  daisies  and  the  violets  blue, 
Eed  hyacinth  and  yellow  daffodil ; 

Purple  narcissus  like  the  morning's  rays, 

Pale  gander-grass,  and  azure  culver-keys. 


1 28  CONCERNING 

All  these,  and  many  more  of  His  creation, 
That  made  the  heavens,  the  angler  oft  doth  see; 

Taking  therein  no  little  delectation, 

To  think  how  strange,  how  wonderful  they  be ! 

Framing  thereof  an  inward  contemplation, 
To  set  his  heart  from  other  fancies  free : 

And  whilst  he  looks  on  these  with  joyful  eye, 

His  mind  is  rapt  above  the  starry  sky. 

"Who  shall  say  that  the  terza-rima  stanza  was  not  writ- 
ten in  English  fluently  and  gracefully,  before  the  days  of 
"Whistlecraft  and  Don  Juan  ? 

If  thou  desirest,  reader,  to  find  a  catalogue  of  sports 
from  which  thou  mayest  select  that  which  likes  thee  best, 
turn  up  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  or  Joseph 
Strutt's  Sports  and  Pastimes  of  the  People  of  England. 
There  mayest  thou  read  of  Rural  Exercises  practised  by 
Persons  of  Rank,  of  Rural  Exercises  Generally  prac- 
tised: (note  how  ingeniously  Strutt  puts  the  case:  he 
does  not  say  practised  by  Snobs,  or  the  Lower  Orders, 
or  the  Mobocracy).  Next  are  Pastimes  Exercised  in 
Towns  and  Cities;  and  finally,  Domestic  Amusements, 
and  Pastimes  Appropriated  to  particular  Seasons.  Were 
it  not  that  my  paper  is  verging  to  its  close,  I  could  sur- 
prise thee  with  a  vast  display  of  curious  erudition  ;  but  I 
must  content  myself  with  having  laid  down  the  condi- 
tions which  all  true  play  must  fulfil ;  and  let  every  man 
choose  the  kind  of  play  which  hits  his  peculiar  taste. 
There  never  has  been  in  England  any  lack  of  sports  in 
nominal  existence  :  I  heartily  wish  they  were  all  (except 
the  cruel  ones  of  baiting  and  torturing  animals)  still  kept 
up.  The  following  lines  are  from  a  little  book  pub- 
lished in  the  reign  of  James  I. :  — 

Man,  I  dare  challenge  thee  to  Throw  the  Sledge, 
To  Jump  or  Leape  over  ditch  or  hedge : 


WORK  AND  PLAY.  129 

To  Wrastle,  play  at  Stooleball,  or  to  Runne, 
To  Pitch  the  Barre,  or  to  shoote  off  a  Gunne : 
To  play  at  Loggetts,  Nine  Holes,  or  Ten  Pinnes, 
To  try  it  out  at  Football  by  the  shinnes: 
At  Ticktack,  Irish  Noddie,  Maw,  and  Ruffe, 
At  Hot  Cockles,  Leapfrog,  or  Blindmanbuffe : 
To  drink  half-pots,  or  deale  at  the  whole  canne, 
To  play  at  Base,  or  Pen  and  ynkhorne  Sir  Jan: 
To  daunce  the  Morris,  play  at  Barley-breake, 
At  all  exploytes  a  man  can  think  or  speak : 
At  Shove-Groate.  Venterpoynt,  or  Crosse  and  Pile, 
At  Beshrow  him  that's  last  at  yonder  Style: 
At  leaping  o'er  a  Midsommer-bon-fier, 
Or  at  the  Drawing  Dun  out  of  the  Myer. 

In  most  agricultural  districts  it  is  wonderful  how  little 
play  there  is   in   the  life  of  the  labouring  class.     Well 
may  the  agricultural  labourer  be  called  a  '  working-man,' 
for  truly  he  does  little  else  than  work.     His  eating  and 
sleeping  are  cut  down  to  the  minimum  that  shall  suffice 
to  keep  him  in  trim  for  working.     And  the  consequence 
is,  that  when  he  does  get  a  holiday,  he  does  not  know 
what  to  make  of  himself;    and  in   too   many  cases   he 
spends   it  in  getting  drunk.     I  know  places  where  the 
working  men  have  no  idea  of  any  play,  of  any  recreation, 
except  getting  drunk.     And  if  their  overwrought  wives, 
who  must  nurse  five  or  six  children,  prepare  the  meals, 
tidy  the  house,  —  in   fact,  do  the  work  which  occupies 
three  or  four  servants  in   the  house  of  the  poorest  gen- 
tleman, —  if  the  poor  overwrought  creatures  can  contrive 
to  find  a  blink  of  leisure  through  their  waking   hours, 
they  know  how  to  make  no  nobler  use  of  it  than  to  gos- 
sip, rather  ill-naturedly,  about  their  neighbours'  affairs, 
and  especially  to  discuss  the  domestic  arrangements  of 
the  squire  and  the  parson.     Working  men  and  women 
too  frequently  have  forgotten  how  to  play.     It  is  so  long 
since   they  did   it,  and  they  have  so  little  heart  for  it. 


130  CONCERNING  WORK  AND  PLAY. 

And  God  knows  that  the  pressure  of  constant  care,  and 
the  wolf  kept  barely  at  arm's  length  from  the  door,  do 
leave  little  heart  for  it.  O  wealthy  proprietors  of  land, 
you  who  have  so  much  in  your  power,  try  to  infuse 
something  of  joy  and  cheerfulness  into  the  lot  of  your 
humble  neighbours  !  Read  and  ponder  the  essay  and 
the  conversation  on  Recreation,  which  you  will  find  in  the 
first  volume  of  Friends  in  Council.  And  read  again,  I 
trust  for  the  hundredth  time,  the  poem  from  which  I 
quote  the  lines  which  follow.  Let  me  say  here,  that  I 
verily  believe  some  of  my  readers  will  not  know  the 
source  whence  I  draw  these  lines.  More  is  the  shame  : 
but  longer  experience  of  life  is  giving  me  a  deep  convic- 
tion of  the  astonishing  ignorance  of  my  fellow-creatures. 
I  shall  not  tell  them.  They  shall  have  the  mortification 
of  asking  their  friends  the  question.  Only  let  it  be  added, 
that  the  poem  where  the  passage  stands,  contains  others 
more  sweet  and  touching  by  far,  —  so  sweet  and  touch- 
ing that  in  all  the  range  of  English  poetry  they  have 
never  been  surpassed. 

How  often  have  I  blest  the  coming  day, 

When  toil  remitting,  lent  its  turn  to  play; 

And  all  the  village  train,  from  labour  free, 

Led  up  their  sports  beneath  the  spreading  tree, 

While  many  a  pastime  circled  in  the  shade, 

The  young  contending  as  the  old  surveyed; 

And  many  a  gambol  frolick'd  o'er  the  ground, 

And  sleights  of  art  and  feats  of  strength  went  round. 

And  still,  as  each  repeated  pleasure  tired, 

Succeeding  sports  the  mirthful  band  inspired: 

The  dancing  pair  that  simply  sought  renown, 

By  holding  out  to  tire  each  other  down, — 

The  swain  mistrustless  of  his  smutted  face, 

While  secret  laughter  titter'd  round  the  place, — 

The  bashful  virgin's  sidelong  looks  of  love, 

The  matron's  glance  that  would  those  looks  reprove. 

These  were  thy  charms,  sweet  village,  sports  like  these, 

With  sweet  succession,  taught  even  toil  to  please. 


CHAPTER   V. 

CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES  AND  COUNTRY 

LIFE. 


,  NCE  upon  a  time,  I  lived  in  the  very  heart 
of  London  :  absolutely  in  Threadneedle- 
street.  I  lived  in  the  house  of  a  near  rela- 
(g^5*aa^^  tion,  an  opulent  lawyer,  who,  after  he  had 
become  a  rich  man,  chose  still  to  dwell  in  the  locality 
where  he  had  made  his  fortune.  All  around,  for  miles 
in  every  direction,  there  were  nothing  but  piles  of  houses 
—  streets  and  lanes  of  dingy  brick  houses  everywhere. 
Not  a  vestige  of  nature  could  be  seen,  except  in  the  sky 
above,  in  the  stunted  vegetation  of  a  few  little  City  gar- 
dens, and  in  the  foul  and  discoloured  river.  The  very 
surface  of  the  earth,  for  yards  in  depth,  was  the  work  of 
generations  that  had  lived  and  died  centuries  before  amid 
the  narrow  lanes  of  the  ancient  city.  Thei*e,  for  months 
together,  I,  a  boy  without  youth,  under  the  care  of  one 
who,  though  substantially  kind,  had  not  a  vestige  of 
sympathy  with  nature  or  with  home  affections,  wearily 
counted  the  days  which  were  to  pass  before  the  yearly 
visit  to  a  home  far  away.  I  cannot  by  any  words  ex- 
press the  thirst  and  craving  which  I  then  felt  for  green 
fields  and  trees.  The  very  name  of  the  country  was  like 
music  in  my  ear ;  and  when  I  heard  any  man  say  he  was 
going  down  to  the  country,  how  I  envied  him  !  It  was 
not  so  bad  in  winter :  though  even  then  the  clear  frosty 


132  CONCEEXIXG  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

days  called  up  many  pictures  of  cheerful  winter  skies  away 
from  those  weary  streets  ;  —  of  houghs  bending  beneath 
the  quiet  snow  ;  —  of  the  beautiful  fretwork  of  the  frost 
upon  the  hedges  and  the  grass,  and  of  its  exhilarating 
crispness  in  the  air  ;  —  of  the  stretches  of  the  frozen 
river,  seen  through  the  leafless  boughs,  covered  with 
happy  groups  whose  merry  faces  were  like  a  good-natured 
defiance  of  the  wintry  weather.  But  when  the  spring 
revival  began  to  make  itself  felt ;  when  the  days  began 
to  lengthen,  and  the  poor  shrubs  in  the  squares  to  bud, 
and  when  there  was  that  accession  of  light  during  the 
day  which  is  so  cheerful  after  the  winter  gloom,  then  the 
longing  for  the  country  grew  painfully  strong,  like  the 
seaman's  calenture,  or  the  Swiss  exile's  yearning  for  his 
native  hills.  When  I  knew  that  the  hawthorn  hedges 
were  white,  and  the  fruit-trees  laden  with  blossoms,  how 
I  longed  to  be  among  them  !  I  well  remember  the 
kindly  feeling  I  bore  to  a  dingy  hostelry  in  a  narrow  lane 
off  Cheapside,  for  the  sake  of  its  name.  It  was  called 
Blossom's  Inn  ;  and  many  a  time  I  turned  out  of  my  way, 
and  stood  looking  up  at  its  sign,  with  eyes  that  saw  a 
very  different  scene  from  the  blackened  walls.  I  remem- 
ber how  I  used  to  rise  at  early  morning,  and  take  long 
walks  in  whatever  direction  I  thought  it  possible  that  a 
glimpse  of  anything  like  the  country  could  be  seen  : 
away  up  the  New  North-road  there  were  some  trees, 
and  some  little  plots  of  grass.  There  was  something  at 
once  pleasing  and  sad  about  those  curious  little  gardens 
which  still  exist  here  and  there  in  the  heart  of  London, 
consisting  generally  of  a  plot  of  grass  of  a  dozen  yards 
in  length  and  breadth,  surrounded  by  a  walk  of  yellow- 
gravel,  stared  at  on  every  side  by  the  back  windows  of 
tall  brick  houses,  and  containing  a  few  little  trees,  whose 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  133 

leaves  in  spring  look  so  strangely  fresh  against  the  smoke- 
blackened  branches.  I  do  not  wish  to  be  egotistical ;  and 
I  describe  all  these  feelings  merely  because  I  believe  that 
honestly  to  tell  exactly  what  one  has  himself  felt,  is  the 
true  way  to  describe  the  common  feelings  of  most  people 
in  like  circumstances.  I  dare  say  that  if  any  youth  of 
sixteen,  pent  up  in  Threadneedle-street  now,  should  hap- 
pen to  read  what  I  have  written,  he  will  understand  it 
all  with  a  hearty  sympathy  which  I  shall  not  succeed  in 
exciting  in  the  minds  of  many  of  my  readers.  But  such 
a  one  will  know,  thoroughly  and  completely,  what  pic- 
tures rise  before  the  mind's  eye  of  one  pent  up  amid 
miles  of  brick  walls  and  stone  pavements,  at  the  mention 
of  the  country,  of  trees,  hedge-rows,  fields,  quiet  lanes  and 
footpaths,  and  simple  rustic  people. 

I  wish  to  assure  the  man,  shut  up  in  a  great  city,  that 
he  has  compensations  and  advantages  of  which  he  prob- 
ably does  not  think.  The  keenness  of  his  relish  for 
country  scenes,  the  intensity  of  his  enjoyment  of  his  oc- 
casional glimpses  of  them,  counterbalance  in  a  great  de- 
gree the  fact  that  his  glimpses  of  them  are  but  few.  I 
live  in  the  country  now,  and  have  done  so  for  several 
years.  It  is  a  beautiful  district  of  country  too,  and  amid 
a  quiet  and  simple  population ;  yet  I  must  confess  that 
my  youthful  notion  of  rural  bliss  is  a  good  deal  abated. 
'  Use  lessens  marvel,  it  is  said : '  one  cannot  be  always  in 
raptures  about  what  one  sees  every  hour  of  every  day. 
It  is  the  man  in  populous  cities  pent,  who  knows  the 
value  of  green  fields.  It  is  your  cockney  (I  mean  your 
educated  Londoner)  who  reads  Bracebridge  Hall  with 
the  keenest  delight,  and  luxuriates  in  the  thought  of 
country  scenes,  country  houses,  country  life.  He  has 
not  come  close  enough  to  discern  the  flaws  and  blemishes 


134  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

of  the  picture ;  and  he  has  not  learned  by  experience 
that  in  whatever  scenes  led,  human  life  is  always  much 
the  same  thing.  I  have  long  since  found  that  the  coun- 
try, in  this  nineteenth  century,  is  by  no  means  a  scene 
of  Arcadian  innocence  ;  —  that  its  apparent  simplicity  is 
sometimes  dogged  stupidity  ;  —  that  men  lie  and  cheat  in 
the  country  just  as  much  as  in  the  town,  and  that  the 
country  has  even  more  of  mischievous  tittle-tattle  ;  — 
that  sorrow  and  care  and  anxiety  may  quite  well  live  in 
Elizabethan  cottages  grown  over  with  honeysuckle  and 
jasmine,  and  that  very  sad  eyes  may  look  forth  from 
windows  round  which  roses  twine.  The  poets  (town 
poets,  no  doubt)  were  drawing  upon  their  imagination, 
when  they  told  how  '  Virtue  lives  in  Irwan's  Vale,'  and 
how  '  with  peace  and  plenty  there,  lives  the  happy  vil- 
lager.' Virtue  and  religion  are  plants  of  difficult  growth, 
even  in  the  country ;  and  notwithstanding  Cowper's  ex- 
quisite poem,  I  am  not  sure  that  '  The  calm  retreat,  the 
silent  shade,  with  prayer  and  praise  agree,'  better  than 
the  closet  into  which  the  weary  man  may  enter,  in  the 
quiet  evening,  after  the  business  and  bustle  of  the  town. 
People  may  pace  up  and  down  a  country  lane,  between 
fragrant  hedges  of  blossoming  hawthorn,  and  tear  their 
neighbours'  characters  to  very  shreds.  And  the  eye, 
that  is  sharp  to  see  the  minutest  object  on  the  hillside 
far  away,  may  be  blind  to  the  beauty  which  is  spread 
over  all  the  landscape.  Nor  is  the  country  always  in  the 
trim  holiday  dress  which  delights  the  summer  wayfarer. 
Country  roads  are  not  all  nicely  gravelled  walks  between 
edges  of  clipped  box,  or  through  velvety  turf,  shaven  by 
weekly  mowings.  There  are  many  days  on  which  the 
country  looks,  to  any  one  without  a  most  decided  taste 
for  it,  extremely  bleak   and  drear.     The  roads  are  pud- 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  135 

dies  of  mud,  which  will  search  its  way  through  boots  to 
which   art  has   supplied    soles   of  two  inches  thickness. 
The  deciduous  trees  are  shivering  skeletons,  bending  be- 
fore the  howling  blast.      The  sheep   paddle  about  the 
brown  fields,  eating  turnips  mingled  with  clay.     Now, 
for  myself,  I  like  all  that :  but   a  man  from  the  town 
would  not.     I  positively  enjoy  the  wet,  blustering  after- 
noon, with  its  raw  wind,  its  driving  sleet,  its  roads  of 
mud.      How   delightful  the   rapid  'constitutional'  from 
half-past  two  till  half-past  four,  with  the  comfortable  feel- 
ing that  we  have  accomplished  a  good  forenoon's  work 
at  our  desk  (sermon  or  article,  as  the  case  may  be),  and 
with   the  cheerful  prospect  of  getting  rid  of  all  these 
sloppy  garments,  and  feeling  so  snug  and  clean  ere  we 
sit  down  to  dinner,  when  we  shall  hear  the  rain  and  wind 
softened  into  music  through  the  warm  crimson  drapery 
of  our  windows  ;  and  then  the  evening  of  leisure  amid 
books  and  music,  with   the  placens  uxor  on  the  other 
easy-chair  by  the  fireside,  and  the  little  children,  scream- 
ing with  delight,  tumbling  about  one's  knees.     So  I  like 
even  the  gusty,  rainy  afternoon,  for  the  sake  of  all  that  it 
suggests  to  me.      Nor   will  the  true  inhabitant  of  the 
country  forget  the  delight  with  which  he  has  hailed  a 
gloomy,  drizzling  November  day,  when  he  has  evergreen 
shrubs  to  transplant.     Have  I  not  stood  for  hours,  in  a 
state  of  active  and  sensible  enjoyment,  watching  how  the 
hollies  and  yews  and  laurels  gradually  clothed  some  bare 
spot  or  unsightly  corner,  rejoicing  that  the  calm  air  and 
ceaseless  mizzle  which  made  my  attendants  and  myself 
like  soaked  sponges,  was   life  to  these  stout  shoots  and 
these  bright  hearty  green  leaves !     But  a  town  man  does 
not  understand  all  these   things ;  and  I  have  no  doubt 
that  on  one  of  these  January  days,  when  the  entire  dis- 


136  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

tant  prospect  —  hills,  sky,  trees,  fields  —  might  be  faith- 
fully depicted  on  canvas  by  different  shades  of  Indian 
ink,  he  would  see  nothing  in  the  prospect  but  gloom  and 
desolation. 

Then  it  is  very  picturesque  to  see  the  ploughman  at 
work  on  a  soft,  mild  winter  day.  It  is  a  beautiful  con- 
trast, that  light  brown  of  the  turned-over  earth,  and  the 
fresh  green  of  the  remainder  of  the  field  ;  and  what  more 
pleasing  than  these  lines  of  furrow,  so  beautifully  straight 
and  regular  ?  But  go  up  and  walk  by  the  ploughman's 
side,  you  man  from  town,  and  see  how  you  like  it.  You 
will  find  it  awfully  dirty  work.  In  a  few  minutes  you 
will  find  it  difficult  to  drag  along  your  feet,  laden  with 
some  pounds  weight  to  each  of  adherent  earth ;  and  you 
will  have  formed  some  idea  of  the  physical  exertion,  and 
the  constant  attention,  which  the  ploughman  needs,  to 
keep  his  furrow  straight  and  even,  to  retain  the  plough 
the  right  depth  in  the  ground,  and  to  manage  his  horses. 
Hard  work  for  that  poor  fellow  ;  and  ill-paid  work.  No 
horse,  mule,  donkey,  camel,  or  other  beast  of  labour  in 
the  world,  goes  through  so  much  exertion,  in  proportion 
to  his  strength,  between  sunrise  and  sunset,  as  does  that 
rational  being,  all  to  earn  the  humblest  shelter  and  the 
poorest  fare  that  Avill  maintain  bare  life.  You  walk  be- 
side him,  and  see  how  poorly  he  is  dressed.  His  feet 
have  been  wet  since  six  o'clock  a.m.,  when  he  went  half 
a  mile  from  his  cottage  up  to  the  stables  of  the  farm  to 
dress  his  horses  :  he  has  had  a  little  tea  and  coarse 
bread,  and  nothing  more,  for  his  dinner  at  twelve  o'clock 
(I  speak  from  personal  knowledge)  :  he  will  have  nothing 
more  till  his  twelve  (I  have  known  it  fifteen)  hours  of 
work  are  finished,  when  he  will  have  his  scanty  supper  : 
and  while  he  is  walking  backwards  and  forwards  all  day. 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  137 

his  mind  is  not  so  engaged  but  that  he  has  abundant  time 
to  think  of  his  little  home  anxieties,  which  are  not  little 
to  him,  though  they  may  be  nothing,  my  reader,  to  you 
—  of  the  ailing  wife  at  home,  for  whom  the  doctor  orders 
wine  which  he  cannot  buy,  and  of  the  children,  poorly 
fed,  and  barely  clad,  and  hardly  at  all  educated,  born  to 
the  same  life  of  toil  and  penury  as  himself.  I  know 
nothing  about  political  economy  :  I  have  not  understand- 
ing for  it ;  and  I  feel  glad,  when  I  think  of  the  social 
evils  I  see,  that  the  responsibility  of  treating  them  rests 
upon  abler  heads  than  mine.  Neither  do  I  know  how 
much  truth  there  may  be  in  the  stories  of  which  I  hear 
the  echoes  from  afar,  of  the  occasional  privation  and  op- 
pression of  the  manufacturing  poor,  against  which,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  these  unhappy  strikes  and  trades  unions 
are  their  helpless  and  frantic  appeal.  But  I  can  say, 
from  my  own  knowledge  of  the  condition  of  our  agricul- 
tural population,  that  sometimes  men  bearing  the  charac- 
ter of  reputable  farmers  practise  as  great  tyranny  and 
cruelty  towards  their  labourers  and  cottars,  under  a  pure 
sky  and  amid  beautiful  scenery,  as  ever  disgraced  the 
ugly  and  smoky  factory-town,#  where  such  things  seem 
more  in  keeping  with  the  locality. 

Yet,  though  in  a  gloomy  mood,  one  can  easily  make  out 
a  long  catalogue  of  country  evils,  —  evils  which  I  know 
cannot  be  escaped  in  a  fallen  world,  and  among  a  sinful 
race,  —  still  I  thank  God  that  my  lot  is  cast  in  the  coun- 
try. I  know,  indeed,  that  the  town  contains  at  once 
the  best  and  the  worst  of  mankind.  In  the  country, 
we  are,  intellectually  and  morally,  a  sort  of  middling 
species ;  we  do  not  present  the  extremes,  either  in  good 
or  evil,  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  hot-house  atmos- 
phere of  great  cities.     There  is  no  reasoning  with  tastes, 


138  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

as  every  one  knows  ;  but  to  some  men  there  is,  at  every 
season,  an  indescribable  charm  about  a  country  life.  I 
like  to  know  all  about  the  people  around  me  ;  and  I  do 
not  care  though  in  return  they  know  all,  and  more  than 
all,  about  me.  I  like  the  audible  stillness  in  which  one 
lives  on  autumn  days  ;  the  murmur  of  the  wind  through 
trees  even  when  leafless,  and  the  brawl  of  the  rivulet 
even  when  swollen  and  brown.  There  is  a  constant 
source  of  innocent  pleasure  and  interest  in  little  country 
cares,  in  planting  and  tending  trees  and  flowers,  in  sym- 
pathizing with  one's  horses  and  dogs,  —  even  with  pigs 
and  poultry.  And  although  one  may  have  lived  beyond 
middle  age  without  the  least  idea  that  he  had  any  taste 
for  such  matters,  it  is  amazing  how  soon  he  will  find, 
when  he  comes  to  call  a  country  home  his  own,  that  the 
taste  has  only  been  latent,  kept  down  by  circumstances, 
and  ready  to  spring  into  vigorous  existence  whenever 
the  repressing  circumstances  are  removed.  Men  in  whom 
this  is  not  so,  are  the  exception  to  the  universal  rule. 
Take  the  senior  wrangler  from  his  college,  and  put  him 
down  in  a  pretty  country  parsonage ;  and  in  a  few  weeks 
he  will  take  kindly  to  training  honeysuckle  and  climbing 
roses,  he  will  find  scope  for  his  mathematics  in  laying 
out  a  flower-garden,  and  he  will  be  all  excitement  in 
planning  and  carrying  out  an  evergreen  shrubbery,  a 
primrose  bank,  a  winding  walk,  a  little  stream  with  a 
tiny  waterfall,  spanned  by  a  rustic  bridge.  Proud  he 
will  be  of  that  piece  of  engineering,  as  ever  was  Eobert 
Stephenson  when  he  had  spanned  the  stormy  Menai. 
There  is  something  in  all  this  simple  work  that  makes  a 
man  kind-hearted :  out-of-door  occupation  of  this  sort 
gives  one  much  more  cheerful  views  of  men  and  things, 
and  disposes  one  to  sympathize  heartily  with  the  cottager 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  139 

proud  of  his  little  rose-plots,  and  of  his  enormous  gooseber- 
ry that  attained  to  renown  in  the  pages  of  the  county  news- 
papei*.  I  do  not  say  anything  of  the  incalculable  advan- 
tage to  health  which  arises  from  this  pleasant  intermin- 
gling of  mental  and  physical  occupation  in  the  case  of  the 
recluse  scholar  ;  nor  of  the  animated  rebound  with  which 
one  lays  down  the  pen  or  closes  the  volume,  and  hastens 
out  to  the  total  change  of  interest  which  is  found  in  the 
open  air ;  nor  of  the  evening  at  mental  work  again,  but 
with  the  lungs  that  play  so  freely,  the  head  that  feels  so 
cool  and  clear,  the  hand  so  firm  and  ready,  testifying  that 
we  have  not  forgotten  the  grand  truth  that  to  care  for 
bodily  health  and  condition  is  a  Christian  duty,  bringing 
with  its  due  discharge  an  immediate  and  sensible  bless- 
ing. I  am  sure  that  the  poor  man  who  comes  to  ask  a 
favour  of  his  parish  clergyman,  has  a  far  better  chance  of 
finding  a  kind  and  unhurried  hearing,  if  he  finds  him  of 
an  afternoon  superintending  his  labourers,  rosy  with 
healthful  exercise,  delighted  with  the  good  effect  which 
has  been  produced  by  some  little  improvement  —  the 
deviation  of  a  walk,  the  placing  of  an  araucaria  —  than 
if  he  found  the  parson  a  bilious,  dyspeptic,  splenetic, 
gloomy,  desponding,  morose,  misanthropic,  horrible  ani- 
mal, with  knitted  brow  and  jarring  nerves,  lounging  in 
his  easy-chair  before  the  fire,  and  afraid  to  go  out  into 
the  fine  clear  air,  for  fear  (unhappy  wretch)  of  getting  a 
sore  throat  or  a  bad  cough.  I  remember  to  have  read 
somewhere  of  an  humble  philanthropist  who  undertook 
the  reformation  of  a  number  of  juvenile  thieves  ;  and  for 
that  end  employed  them  in  a  large  garden  somewhere 
near  London,  to  raise  vegetables  and  flowers  for  the  mar- 
ket. There  did  the  youthful  prig  concentrate  his  thoughts 
on  the  planting  of  cabbage,  and  find  the  unwonted  de- 


140  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

light  of  a  day  spent  in  innocent  labour ;  there  did  the 
area-sneak  bud  the  rose  and  set  the  potato ;  and  there, 
as  days  passed  on,  under  the  gentle  influence  of  vegetable 
nature,  did  a  healthier,  happier,  purer  tone  come  over 
the  spiritual  nature,  even  as  a  healthier  blood  came  to 
heart  and  veins.  The  philanthropist  was  a  true  philoso- 
pher. There  is  not  a  more  elevating  and  purifying  occu- 
pation than  that  of  tending  the  plants  of  the  earth.  I 
should  never  be  afraid  of  finding  a  man  revengeful,  ma- 
lignant, or  cruel,  whom  I  knew  to  be  fond  of  his  shrubs 
and  flowers.  And  I  believe  that  in  the  mind  of  most 
men  of  cultivation,  there  is  some  vague,  undefined  sense 
that  the  country  is  the  scene  where  human  life  attains  its 
happiest  development.  I  believe  that  the  great  propor- 
tion of  such  men  cherish  the  hope,  perhaps  a  distant  and 
faint  one,  that  at  some  time  they  shall  possess  a  country 
home  where  they  may  pass  the  last  years  tranquilly,  far 
from  the  tumult  of  cities.  Many  of  those  who  cherish 
such  a  hope  will  never  realize  it ;  and  many  more  are 
quite  unsuited  for  enjoying  a  country  life  were  it  within 
their  reach.  But  all  this  is  founded  upon  the  instinctive 
desire  there  is  in  human  nature  to  possess  some  portion 
of  the  earth's  surface.  You  look  with  indescribable  in- 
terest at  an  acre  of  ground  which  is  your  own.  There  is 
something  quite  remarkable  about  your  own  trees.  You 
have  a  sense  of  property  in  the  sunset  over  your  own 
hills.  And  there  is  a  perpetual  pleasure  in  the  sight  of 
a  fair  landscape,  seen  from  your  own  door.  Do  not  be- 
lieve people  who  say  that  all  scenes  soon  become  indiffer- 
ent, through  being  constantly  seen.  An  ugly  street  may 
cease  to  be  a  vexation,  when  you  get  accustomed  to  it; 
but  a  pleasanl  prospect  becomes  even  more  pleasant, 
when  the  beauty  which  arises  from  your  own  associations 


AND   COUNTRY   LIFE.  141 

with  it  is  added  to  that  which  is  properly  its  own.  No 
doubt,  you  do  grow  weary  of  the  landscape  before  your 
windows,  when  you  are  spending  a  month  at  some  place 
of  temporary  sojourn,  seaside  or  inland  ;  but  it  is  quite 
different  with  that  which  surrounds  your  own  home. 
You  do  not  try  that  by  so  exacting  a  standard.  You 
never  think  of  calling  your  constant  residence  dull,  though 
it  may  be  quiet  to  a  degree  which  would  make  you  think 
a  place  insupportably  dull,  to  which  you  were  paying  a 
week's  visit. 

What  an  immense   variety  of  human   dwellings  are 
comprised    within    the    general   name    of    the    Country 
Home  !     We  begin  with  such  places  as  Chatsworth  and 
Belvoir,   Arundel  and   Alnwick,   Hamilton  and   Drum- 
lanrig  :    houses  standing  far  withdrawn  within  encircling 
woods,  approached  by  avenues  of  miles  in  length,  which 
debouch  on  public  highways  in  districts  of  country  quite 
remote   from   one  another ;  with  acres  of  conservatory, 
and  scores  of  miles  of  walks  ;  and  shutting  in  their  sacred 
precincts  by  great  pairk  wralls  from  the  approach  and  the 
view  of  an  obtrusive   world  beyond.     We  think  of  the 
old   Edwardian    Castle,    weather-worn    and    grim,    with 
drawbridge  and  portcullis  and  moat  and  oak-roofed  hall 
and   storied   windows ;    of  the    huge,    square,  corniced, 
many-chimnied,  ugly  building  of  the  renaissance,  which 
never  has  anything  to  recommend  its  aspect  except  when 
it  gains  a  dignity  from  enormous  size  ;  then  down  through 
the   classes  of  manor-houses,    abbeys,  and   halls,  hio-h- 
gabled,   oriel-windowed,    turret-staired,    long-corridored, 
haunted-chambered,    with   their   parks,  greater  or  less, 
their  oaken  clumps,  their  spreading  horse-chestnuts,  their 
sunshiny  glades,  their  startled  deer  ;    till  we  come  to  the 
villa  with  a  few  acres  of  ground,  such  as  Dean  Swift 


142  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

wished  for  himself,  with  its  modest  conservatory,  its  neat 
little  shrubbery,  its  short  carriage  drive,  its  brougham  or 
phaeton  drawn  by  one  stout  horse.  Then,  upon  the  out- 
skirts of  the  country  town,  Ave  find  a  class  of  less  ambi- 
tious dwellings,  which  yet  struggle  for  the  title  of  villa  — 
cheap  would-be  Gothic  houses,  with  overhanging  eaves 
and  latticed  windows,  standing  in  a  half-acre  plot  of 
ground,  which  yet  is  large  enough  to  give  a  new  direc- 
tion to  the  tradesman's  thoughts,  by  giving  him  space  to 
cultivate  a  few  shrubs  and  flowers.  Last  comes  the  way- 
side cottage,  sometimes  neat  and  pretty,  often  cold,  damp, 
and  ugly  ;  sometimes  gay  with  its  little  plot  of  flowers, 
sometimes  odorous  with  its  neighbouring  dungheap  ;  the 
difference  depending  not  half  so  much  upon  the  income 
enjoyed  by  its  tenant,  as  upon  his  having  a  tidy,  active 
wife,  and  a  kindly,  improving,  generous  landlord. 

And  various  as  the  varied  dwellings,  are  the  scenes 
amid  which  they  stand.  In  rich  English  dales,  in  wild 
Highland  glens,  on  the  bank  of  quiet  inland  rivers,  and 
on  windy  cliffs  frowning  over  the  ocean  —  there,  and  in 
a  thousand  other  places,  we  have  still  the  country  home, 
with  its  peculiar  characteristics.  Thither  comes  the 
postman  only  once  a  day,  always  anxiously,  often  ner- 
vously expected  :  and  thither  the  box  of  books,  the  mag- 
azines of  last  month,  and  the  reviews  of  last  quarter, 
sent  from  the  Reading-club  in  the  High-street  of  the 
town  five  miles  off".  How  truly,  by  the  way,  has  some- 
body or  other  stated  that  the  next  town  and  the  railway 
station  are  always  five  miles  away  from  every  country 
house  !  Thither  the  carrier,  three  times  a  week,  brings 
the  wicker-woven  box  of  bread ;  there  does  the  manag- 
ing housewife  have  her  store-room,  round  whose  shelves 
are  arranged  groceries  of  every  sort  and  degree  ;  and 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  143 

there,  at  uncertain  intervals,  dies  the  home-fed  sheep  or 
pig,  which   yieldeth  joints    which   are   pronounced   far 
superior  to  any  which  the  butcher's  shop  ever  supplied. 
There,  sometimes,  is  found  the  cheerful,  modest  estab- 
lishment, calculated  rather  within  the  income,  with  every- 
thing comfortable,  neat,  and  even  elegant ;  where  family 
dinners  may  be  enjoyed  which  afford  real  satisfaction  to 
all,  and  win  the  approval  of  even  the  most  refined  gour- 
met ;  and  there  sometimes,  especially  when  the  mistress 
of  the  house  is  a  fool,  is  found  the  unhappy  scramble  of 
the  menage  that,  with  a  thousand  a  year,  aims  at  aping 
five  thousand ;  where  there  is  a  French  ladies'-maid  of 
cracked   reputation,   and  a  lady   who    talks   largely   of 
'  what  has  she  been  accustomed  to,'  and  '  what  she  re- 
gards herself  as  entitled  to  ; '    where  every-day  comfort 
is  sacrificed  to  occasional  attempts  at  showy  entertain- 
ments, to   which  the  neighbouring  peer  goes  under  the 
pressure  of  a  most  urgent  invitation ;  where  gooseberry 
champagne  and  very  acid  claret  flow  in  hospitable  pro- 
fusion ;  and  where  dressed-up  stable-boys  and  plough- 
men dash  wildly  up  against  each  other,  as  the  uneasy 
banquet  strains  anxiously  along. 

Very  incomplete  would  be  any  attempt  at  classifying 
the  country  homes  of  Britain,  in  which  no  mention 
should  be  made  of  the  dwellings  of  the  clergy.  In  this 
country,  the  parish  priest  is  not  isolated  from  all  sym- 
pathy with  the  members  of  his  flock,  by  an  enforced 
celibacy ;  he  is  not  only  the  spiritual  guide  of  his  parish- 
ioners, but  he  is  in  most  instances  the  head  of  a  family, 
the  cultivator  of  the  ground,  the  owner  of  horses,  cows, 
sheep,  pigs,  and  dogs.  I  do  not  deny  that  in  theory,  and 
once  perhaps  in  a  thousand  times  in  practice,  it  is  a  finer 
thing  that  the  clergyman  should  be  one  given  exclusively 


144  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

to  his  sacred  calling,  standing  apart  from  and  elevated 
above   the    little  prosaic  cares  of  life,  and   '  having   his 
conversation  in  Heaven.'     It  seems  at  first  as  if  it  bet- 
ter befitted  one  who  has  to  be  much  exercised  in   sacred 
thoughts  and  duties  —  whose  hands  are  to  dispense  the 
sacred  emblems  of   Communion,  and  Avhose  voice  is  to 
breathe  direction  and  comfort  into  dying  ears  —  to  have 
nothing  to  do  with  such  sublunary  matters  as  seeing  a 
cold  bandage  put  upon  a  horse's  foreleg,  or  arranging  for 
the  winter  supply  of  hay,  or  considering  as  to  laying  in 
store  of  coals  at  the  setting  in  of  snowy  weather.     It 
jars  somewhat  upon  our  imagination  of  the  even  run  of 
that  holy  calling,  to  think  of  the  parson  (like  Sydney 
Smith)  proudly  producing  his  lemon-bag,  or  devising  his 
patent  Tantalus  and  his  universal  scratcher.     But  surely 
all  this  is  a  wrong  view  of  things.     Surely  it  is  Platonism 
rather  than  Christianity  to  hold  that  there  is  anything 
necessarily  debasing  or  materializing  about  the  cares  of 
daily  life.     All  these  cares  take  their  character  from  the 
spirit  with  which  we  pass  through  them.     The   simple 
French  monk,  five  hundred  years  since,  who   acted  as 
cook  to  his  brethren,  indicated  the  clergyman's  true  path 
when  he  wrote,  '  I  put  my  little  egg-cake  on  the  fix*e  for 
the  sake  of  Christ ; '  and   George  Herbert,  more  grace- 
fully, has  shown  how,  as  the  eye  may  either  look  on  glass, 
or  look  through  it,  Ave  may  look  no  farther  than  the  daily 
task,  or  may  look  through  it  to  something  nobler  beyond: 

Teach  me,  my  God  and  King, 

In  all  things  Thee  to  see: 
And,  what  I  do  in  anything, 

To  do  it  as  for  Thee. 

A  servant  with  this  clause, 

Makes  drudgery  divine  : 
Who  sweeps  a  room,  as  for  Thy  laws, 

Makes  that,  and  the  action,  fine. 


AND   COUNTEY   LIFE.  145 

We  have  all  in  our  mind  some  abstracted  and  idealized 
picture  of  what  the  country  parsonage,  as  well  as  the 
country  parson,  should  be :  the  latter,  the  clergyman  and 
the  gentleman :  the  former,  the  fit  abode  for  him  and 
his ;  near  the  church,  not  too  much  retired  from  the 
public  way,  old  and  ivied,  of  course  Gothic,  with  bay 
windows,  fantastic  gables,  wreathed  chimneys,  and  over- 
hanging eaves ;  with  many  evergreens,  with  ancient 
trees,  with  peaches  ripening  on  the  sunny  garden  wall, 
with  an  indescribable  calm  and  peacefulness  over  the 
whole,  deepened  by  the  chime  of  the  passing  river,  and 
the  windy  caw  of  the  distant  rookery  ;  such  should  the 
country  parsonage  be.  But  the  best  of  anything  is  no.t 
the  commonest  of  the  class :  and  I  can  only  add  that  I 
believe  it  would  afford  unmingled  satisfaction  to  the 
tenant  of  rectory,  vicarage,  parsonage,  deanery,  or  manse, 
if  his  dwelling  were  all  that  the  writer  would  wish  to 
see  it. 

It  is  pleasant  to  think  over  what  we  may  call  the 
poetry  of  country  house-making, —  the  historical  cases 
in  which  men  have  sought  to  idealize  to  the  utmost  the 
scene  around  them,  and  to  live  in  a  more  ambitious  or  a 
humbler  fairyland.  Yet  the  instances  that  first  occur  to 
us  do  not  encourage  the  belief  that  happiness  is  more 
certainly  to  be  found  in  fairyland  than  in  Manchester  or 
in  Siberia.  One  thinks  of  Beckford,  the  master  of 
almost  unlimited  wealth,  '  commanding  his  fairy-palace  to 
glitter  amid  the  orange  groves,  and  aloes,  and  palms  of 
Cintra  : '  and  after  he  had  formed  his  paradise,  wearying 
of  it,  and  abandoning  it,  to  move  the  gloomy  moralizing 
of  Childe  Harold.  One  thinks  of  him,  not  yet  content 
with  his  experience,  spending  twenty  years  upon  the 
turrets  and  gardens  of  Fonthill,  that  '  cathedral  turned 
10 


146  CONCERNING  COUNTRY   JIOUSES 

into  a  toyshop  ; '  whose  magnificence  was  yet  but  a  faint 
and  distant  attempt  to  equal  the  picture  drawn  by  the 
prodigal  imagination  of  the  author  of  Vatheh.  One 
thinks  of  Horace  Walpole,  amid  the  gim-crackery  of 
Strawberry-hill ;  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  building  year  by 
year  that  '  romance  in  stone  and  lime,'  and  idealizing  the 
bleakest  and  ugliest  portion  of  the  banks  of  the  Tweed, 
till  the  neglected  Clartyhole  became  the  charming  but 
costly  Abbotsford.  One  thinks  of  Shenstone,  devoting 
his  life  to  making  a  little  paradise  of  the  Leasowes, 
where,  as  Johnson  tells  us  in  his  grand  resounding  prose, 
he  set  himself  '  to  point  his  prospects,  to  diversify  his 
surface,  to  entangle  his  walks,  and  to  wind  his  waters ; 
which  he  did  with  such  judgment  and  fancy  as  made  his 
little  domain  the  envy  of  the  great  and  the  admiration  of 
the  skilful ;  a  place  to  be  visited  by  travellers  and  copied 
by  designers.'  Nor  must  we  forget  how  the  bitter  little 
Pope,  by  the  taste  with  which  he  laid  out  his  five 
acres  at  Twickenham,  did  much  to  banish  the  stiff 
Dutch  style,  and  to  encourage  the  modern  fashion  of  land- 
scape-gardening in  imitation  of  nature,  which  was  so  suc- 
cessfully carried  out  by  the  well-known  Capability  Brown. 
It  is  putting  too  extreme  a  case,  when  we  pass  to  that 
which  in  our  boyish  days  we  all  thought  the  perfection 
and  delight  of  country  residences,  the  island-cave  of 
Robinson  Crusoe :  with  its  barricade  of  stakes  which 
took  root  and  grew  into  trees,  and  its  impenetrable  wilder- 
ness of  wood,  all  planted  by  the  exile's  hand,  which  went 
down  to  the  margin  of  the  sea.  It  is  coming  nearer 
home,  to  pass  to  the  French  chateau ;  the  tower  perched 
upon  the  rock  above  the  Rhine;  and  the  German  castle, 
which  of  course  is  somewhere  in  the  Black  Forest,  fre- 
quented  by  robbers  and  haunted   by  ghosts.      And  we 


AND   COUNTRY   LIFE.  147 

ascend  to  the  sublime  in  human  abodes,  when  we  think 
of  the  magnificent  Alhambra,  looking  down  proudly  upon 
Moorish  Granada :  that  miracle  of  barbaric  beauty, 
which  Washington  Irving  has  so  finely  described  :  with 
its  countless  courts  and  halls,  its  enchanted  gateways,  its 
graceful  pillars  of  marble  of  different  hues,  and  its  foun- 
tains that  once  made  cool  music  for  the  delight  of  Mos- 
lem prince  and  peer. 

We  pass,  by  an  easy  transition,  to  the  literature  of 
country-houses,  of  which  there  are  two  well-marked  clas- 
ses. We  have  the  real  and  the  ideal  schools  of  the  liter- 
ature of  country-houses  and  country  life  :  or  perhaps,  as 
both  are  in  a  great  degree  ideal,  we  should  rather  call 
them  the  would-be  real,  and  the  avowedly  romantic.  We 
have  the  former  charmingly  exemplified  in  Bracebridge 
Hall;  charmingly  in  the  Spectator's  account  of  Sir 
Roger  de  Coverley,  amid  his  primitive  tenantry ;  with  a 
little  characteristic  coarseness,  in  Swift's  poem,  beginning, 

I've  often  wished  that  I  had  clear, 
For  life,  six  hundred  pounds  a  year,  — 

which,  by  the  way,  is  an  imitation  of  that  graceful  Latin 
poet  who  delighted,  so  many  centuries  since,  in  his  little 
Sabine  farm.  Then  there  are  Miss  Mitford's  quiet, 
pleasing  delineations  of  English  country  life  ;  many  de- 
lightful touches  of  it  in  Friends  in  Council  and  its  sequel ; 
and  Samuel  Rogers,  though  essentially  a  man  of  the 
town,  has  given  a  very  complete  picture  of  cottage  life 
in  his  little  poem,  which  thus  sets  out, 

Mine  be  a  cot  beside  the  hill ; 
A  beehive's  hum  shall  soothe  ray  ear: 
A  willowy  brook,  that  turns  a  mill, 
With  many  a  fall,  shall  linger  near. 


148  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

We  mention  all  these,  not  of  course,  as  a  thousandth 
part  of  what  our  literature  contains  of  country-houses 
and  life,  but  as  a  sample  of  that  mode  of  treating  these 
subjects  which  we  have  termed  the  would-be  real :  and 
as  specimens  of  the  avowedly  romantic  way  of  describ- 
ing such  things,  we  refer  to  Poe's  gorgeous  picture  of  the 
'  Domain  of  Arnheim,'  where  his  affluent  imagination  has 
run  riot,  under  the  stimulus  of  fancied  boundless  wealth  : 
and  the  same  author's  '  Landor's  Cottage,'  a  scene  of 
sweet  simplicity,  which  is  somewhat  spoiled  by  just  the 
smallest  infusion  of  the  theatrical.  The  writings  of  Foe, 
with  all  their  extraordinary  characteristics,  are  so  little 
known  in  this  country,  that  we  dare  say  our  readers  will 
feel  obliged  to  us  for  a  short  account  of  the  former  piece. 

A  certain  man,  named  Ellison,  suddenly  came  into  the 
possession  of  a  fortune  of  a  hundred  millions  sterling. 
Poe,  you  see,  being  wretchedly  poor,  did  not  do  things  by 
halves.  Ellison  resolved  that  he  would  find  occupation 
and  happiness  in  making  the  finest  place  in  the  world  ; 
and  he  made  it.  The  approach  to  Arnheim  was  by  the 
river.  After  intricate  windings,  pursued  for  some  hours 
through  wild  chasms  and  rocks,  the  vessel  suddenly  en- 
tered a  circular  basin  of  water,  of  two  hundred  yards  in 
diameter :  this  basin  was  surrounded  by  hills  of  consider- 
able height :  — 

Their  sides  sloped  from  the  water's  edge  at  an  angle  of  some  forty- 
five  degrees,  and  the}'  were  clothed  from  base  to  summit,  not  a  per- 
ceptible point  escaping,  in  a  draper}'  of  the  most  gorgeous  flower- 
blossoms:  scarcely  a  green  loaf  being  visible  among  the  sea  of  odorous 
ami  fluctuating  colour.  This  basin  was  of  great  depth,  but  so  trans- 
parent was  the  water  that  the  bottom,  which  seemed  to  consist  of  a 
thick  mass  of  small  round  alabaster  pebbles,  was  distinctly  visible  by 
glimpses,  —  that  is  to  say,  whenever  the  eye  could  permit  itself  not  to 
see,  far  down  in  the  inverted  heaven,  the  duplicate  blooming  of  the 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  149 

hills.  On  these  latter  there  were  no  trees,  nor  even  shrubs  of  any 
size.  *  *  *  As  the  eye  traced  upwards  the  myriad-tinted  slope, 
from  its  sharp  junction  with  the  water  to  its  vague  termination  amid 
the  folds  of  overhanging  cloud,  it  became,  indeed,  difficult  not  to 
fancy  a  panoramic  cataract  of  rubies,  sapphires,  opals,  and  golden 
onyxes,  rolling  silently  out  of  the  sky. 

Here  the  visitor  quits  the  vessel  which  has  borne  him 
so  far,  and  enters  a  light  canoe  of  ivory,  which  is  wafted 
by  unseen  machinery  :  — 

The  canoe  steadily  proceeds,  and  the  rocky  gate  of  the  vista  is  ap- 
proached, so  that  its  depths  can  be  more  distinctly  seen.  To  the 
right  arise  a  chain  of  lofty  hills,  rudely  and  luxuriantly  wooded.  It 
is  observed,  however,  that  the  trait  of  exquisite  cleanness  where  the 
bank  dips  into  the  water  still  prevails.  There  is  not  one  token  of  the 
usual  river  debris.  To  the  left,  the  character  of  the  scene  is  softer  and 
more  obviously  artificial.  Here  the  bank  slopes  upward  from  the 
stream  in  a  very  gentle  ascent,  forming  a  broad  sward  of  grass  of  a 
texture  resembling  nothing  so  much  as  velvet,  and  of  a  brilliancy  of 
green  which  would  bear  comparison  with  the  tint  of  the  purest  emer- 
ald. This,  plateau  varies  in  breadth  from  ten  to  three  hundred  yards; 
reaching  from  the  river  bank  to  a  wall,  fifty  feet  high,  which  extends 
in  an  infinity  of  curves,  but  following  the  general  direction  of  the 
river,  until  lost  in  the  distance  to  the  westward.  This  wall  is  of  one 
continuous  rock,  and  has  been  formed  by  cutting  perpendicularly  the 
once  rugged  precipice  of  the  stream's  southern  bank;  but  no  trace  of 
the  labour  has  been  suffered  to  remain.  The  chiselled  stone  has  the 
hue  of  ages,  and  is  profusely  hung  and  overspread  with  the  ivy,  the 
coral  honeysuckle,  the  eglantine,  and  the  clematis.  *  *  *  * 

Floating  gently  onward,  the  voyager,  after  many  short  turns,  finds 
his  progress  apparently  barred  by  a  gigantic  gate,  or  rather  door,  of 
burnished  gold,  elaborately  carved  and  fretted,  and  reflecting  the  di- 
rect rays  of  the  now  sinking  sun  with  an  effulgence  that  seems  to 
wreathe  the  whole  surrounding  forest  in  flames.  *  *  *  The 
canoe  approaches  the  gate.  Its  ponderous  wings  are  slowly  and 
musically  unfolded.  The  boat  glides  between  them,  and  commences 
a  rapid  descent  into  a  vast  amphitheatre  entirely  begirt  with  purple 
mountains,  whose  bases  are  laved  by  a  gleaming  river  throughout  the 
full  extent  of  their  circuit.  Meanwhile  the  whole  Paradise  of  Ana- 
heim bursts  upon  the  view.  There  is  a  gush  of  entrancing  melody : 
there  is  an  oppressive  sense  of  strange  sweet  odour:  there  is  a  dream- 


150  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

like  intermingling  to  the  eye  of  tail,  slender  Eastern  trees,  —  bosky 
shrubberies,  —  flocks  of  golden  and  crimson  birds,  —  lily-fringed  lakes, 
—  meadows  of  violets,  tulips,  poppies,  hyacinths,  and  tuberoses, —  long 
intertangled  lines  of  silver  streamlets. — and,  upspringing  confusedly 
from  amid  all,  a  mass  of  semi-Gothic,  semi-Saracenic  architecture, 
sustaining  itself  as  if  by  miracle  in  mid-air,  —  glittering  in  the  red 
sunlight  with  a  hundred  oriels,  minarets,  and  pinnacles;  and  seeming 
the  phantom  handiwork,  conjointly,  of  the  Sylphs,  the  Fairies,  the 
Genii,  and  the  Gnomes.* 

This  is  certainly  landscape-gardening  on  a  grand  scale  : 
but  the  whole  thing  is  a  shade  too  immediately  sugges- 
tive of  the  Arabian  Nights.  Why  not,  we  are  disposed 
to  say,  go  the  entire  length  of  Aladdin's  palace  at  once, 
and  give  us  walls  of  alternate  blocks  of  silver  and  gold  ; 
gardens,  whose  trees  bear  fruits  of  diamond,  emerald, 
ruby,  and  sapphire  ;  and  a  roc's  egg  hung  up  in  the 
entrance-hall  ?  Fancy  a  man  driving  up  in  a  post-chaise 
from  the  railway-station  to  a  house  like  that !  Why,  the 
only  permissible  way  of  arriving  at  its  front-door  would 
be  on  an  enchanted  horse,  that  has  brought  one  from 
Bagdad  through  the  air  ;  and  instead  of  a  footman  in 
spruce  livery  coming  out  to  take  in  one's  portmanteau,  I 
should  look  to  be  received  by  a  porter  with  an  elephant's 
head,  or  an  afrit  with  bats'  wings.  I  could  not  go  up 
comfortably  to  my  room  to  dress  for  dinner :  and  only 
fancy  coming  down  to  the  drawing-room  in  a  coat  by 
Stulz  and  dress  boots  by  Hoby  !  Rather  should  we 
wreathe  our  brow  with  flowers,  endue  a  purple  robe,  the 
gift  of  Noureddin,  and  perfume  our  handkerchief  with 
odours  which  had  formed  part  of  the  last  freight  of  Sin- 
bad  the  Sailor.  If  we  made  any  remark,  political  or 
critical,  which  happened  to  be  disagreeable  to  our  host. 

*  Works  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Vol.  I.  pp.  400-403.  American 
I  •  1  i  t  ion. 


AND   COUNTRY   LIFE.  151 

of  course  he  would  immediately  change  us  into  an  ape, 
and  transport  us  a  thousand  leagues  in  a  second  to  the 
Dry  Mountains. 

But  to  return  to  the  sober  daylight  in  which  ordinary 
mortals  live,  and  to  the  sort  of  country  in  which  a  man 
may  live  whose  fortune  is  less  than  a  hundred  millions, 
we  have  abundance  of  the  literature  of  the  country  in 
one  shape  or  another :  poetry  and  poetic  prose  which 
profess  to  depict  country  life,  and  books  of  detail  which 
profess  to  instruct  us  how  to  manage  country  concerns. 
We  breathe  a  clear,  cool  atmosphere  for  which  we  are 
the  better,  when  we  turn  over  the  pages  of  The  Seasons  : 
that  is  a  book  which  never  will  become  stale.  Cowper's 
poetry  is  redolent  of  the  country :  and  though  it  is  all 
nonsense  to  say  that  '  God  made  the  country  and  man 
made  the  town,'  yet  The  Winter  Walk  at  Noon  almost 
leads  us  to  think  so.  You  see  the  Cockney's  fancy  that 
the  country  is  a  paradise,  always  in  holiday  guise,  in  poor 
Keats's  lines  — 

0  for  a  draught  of  vintage,  that  hath  been 
Cooled  for  a  long  age  in  the  deep-delved  earth; 

Tasting  of  Flora  and  the  country  green, 
Dance,  and  Provencal  song,  and  sun-burnt  mirth ! 

And  there  are  several  books  whose  titles  are  sure  to 
awaken  pleasant  thoughts  in  the  mind  of  the  lover  of 
nature,  who  knows  that,  notwithstanding  Dr.  Johnson's 
axiom,  one  green  field  is  not  just  like  any  other  green 
field,  and  who  prefers  a  country  lane  to  Fleet-street. 
There  is  Mr.  Jesse's  Country  Life,  which  is  mainly  occu- 
pied in  describing,  with  a  minute  and  kindly  accuracy, 
the  ways  and  doings  of  bird,  beast,  and  insect ;  and  thus 
calling  forth  a  feeling  of  interest  in  all  our  humble  fel- 
low-creatures ;   for  in  the  case   of  inferior  animals  the 


152  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

principle  holds  good,  that  all  that  is  needed  to  make  one 
like  almost  any  of  them  is  just  to  come  to  know  them. 
And  on  this  track  one  need  do  no  more  than  name 
White's  delightful  Natural  History  of  Selborne.  There 
is  Mr.  William  Howitt's  Boy's  Country  Booh,  which  sets 
out  the  sports  and  occupations  of  childhood  and  rural 
scenes,  with  a  fulness  of  sympathy  which  makes  us 
lament  that  its  author  should  ever  exchange  these  genial 
topics  for  the  briars  of  polemical  controversy.  There  is 
Mr.  Willmott's  Summer  Time  in  the  Country  ;  a  disap- 
pointing book  ;  for  notwithstanding  the  melody  of  its 
name,  it  is  mainly  a  string  of  criticisms,  good,  bad,  and 
indifferent :  with  a  slight  surrounding  atmosphere,  indeed, 
of  country  life  ;  but  most  of  the  production  might  have 
been  written  in  Threadneedle-street.  There  is  a  pleas- 
ant and  well-informed  little  anonymous  volume,  called 
The  Flower  Garden,  which  contains  the  substance  of  two 
articles  originally  published  in  the  Quarterly  Review ; 
and  every  one  knows  Bacon's  Essay  of  Gardens,  in 
which  the  writer  gives  the  reins  to  his  fancy,  and  pictures 
out  a  little  paradise  of  thirty  acres  in  extent,  including  in 
it  some  specimen  of  all  schools  of  landscape  gardening. 
Mrs.  Loudon's  various  publications  have  done  much  to 
foster  a  taste  for  gardening  among  ladies.  An  exceed- 
ingly pleasing  and  genial  book,  called  The  Manse  Gar- 
den, which  has  had  a  large  circulation  in  Scotland,  is 
intended  to  stimulate  the  Scottish  clergy  to  neatness  and 
taste  in  the  arrangement  of  their  gardens  and  glebes.  A 
handsome  work  entitled  Rustic  Adornments  for  Homes  of 
Taste,  lately  published,  contains  many  practical  instruc- 
tions for  the  decoration  of  the  country  home.  And  an 
elegantly  illustrated  volume,  which  appeared  a  few 
months    ago,   is  given    to   Rhymes   and   Roundelays   in 


AND  COUNTEY  LIFE.  153 

Praise  of  a  Country  Life.  Sir  Joseph  Paxton  has  not 
thought  it  unworthy  of  him  to  write  a  little  tract,  called  The 
Cottager's  Calendar  of  Garden  Operations,  the  purpose 
of  which  is  to  show  how  much  may  be  done  in  the  most 
limited  space  in  the  way  of  growing  vegetables  for  profit 
and  flowers  for  ornament ;  and  in  these  days,  when  hap- 
pily the  social  and  sanitary  elevation  of  the  masses  is 
beginning  to  attract  something  of  the  notice  which  it 
deserves,  I  trust  that  reformers  will  not  forget  the  pow- 
erful influence  of  the  garden,  and  a  taste  for  gardening 
concerns,  in  elevating  and  purifying  the  working  man's 
mind,  and  adding  interest  and  beauty  to  the  working 
man's  home.  And  in  truth,  we  shall  never  succeed  in 
inducing  working-men  to  spend  their  evenings  at  home 
rather  than  in  the  alehouse,  till  we  have  succeeded  in  ren- 
dering their  own  homes  tidy,  comfortable,  and  inviting  to 
a  degree  that  shall  at  least  equal  the  neatly  sanded  floor 
and  the  well-scrubbed  benches  which  they  can  enjoy  for 
a  few  pence  elsewhere. 

If  there  be  any  among  my  readers  who  have  it  in 
view  to  build  a  country  house,  I  strongly  recommend 
them  to  have  it  done  by  Mr.  George  Gilbert  Scott, 
whose  pleasantly  written  book  on  Secular  and  Domestic 
Architecture,  will  be  read  with  delight  by  many  who  are 
condemned  to  live  in  towns,  or  who  must  put  up  with 
such  a  countiy  home  as  their  means  permit,  but  who  can 
luxuriate  in  imagining  what  kind  of  a  house  they  would 
have  if  they  could  have  exactly  such  a  house  as  they 
wish.  Mr.  Scott  is  an  out  and  out  supporter  of  Gothic 
architecture  as  the  best  style  for  every  possible  building, 
large  or  small,  in  town  or  country,  from  the  nobleman's 
palace  to  the  labourer's  cottage,  from  a  cathedral  or  a 
town-house  to  a  barn  or  a  pig-sty.     But  Mr.  Scott  gives 


154  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

a  judicious  view  of  Gothic  architecture,  as  a  style  capa- 
ble of  unlimited  expansion  and  adaptation,  having  in  its 
nature  the  power  to  accommodate  itself  to  every  require- 
ment of  modern  life  and  progress,  and  capable  without 
surrenderino-  its  distinctive  character,  of  modification, 
development,  addition,  and  subtraction,  to  a  degree  which 
renders  it  the  true  architecture  of  the  nineteenth  century 
no  less  than  of  the  thirteenth.  It  is  doing  Gothic  archi- 
tecture great  injustice  to  speak  of  it  as  the  mediaeval 
architecture.  Such  a  description  vaguely  suggests  that 
it  is  a  style  especially  suited  to  the  requirements  of  life 
in  the  middle  ages :  and,  by  consequence,  not  well 
adapted  to  the  exigencies  of  life  at  a  period  when  life  is 
very  different  from  what  it  was  in  the  middle  ages.  And 
the  notion  has  been  countenanced  by  the  injudicious 
fashion  in  which  houses  were  built  at  the  beginning  of 
the  great  reaction  in  favour  of  Gothic.  When  people 
grew  wearied  and  disgusted  at  the  ugly  Grecian  houses 
which  disfigure  so  many  fine  old  English  parks,  paltry 
and  pitiful  importations  of  a  foreign  style  into  a  country 
which  had  an  indigenous  style  incomparably  superior  in 
beauty,  in  comfort,  in  every  requisite  of  the  country 
house,  the  reaction  ran  into  excess  ;  and  instead  of  build- 
ing Gothic  houses,  that  is,  instead  of  trying  to  produce 
buildings  which  should  be  noble  and  picturesque,  and 
at  the  same  time  commodious  and  convenient  to  live  in, 
architects  built  abbeys  and  castles ;  and  in  those  cases 
where  they  did  not  produce  specimens  cf  mere  confec- 
tioner's Gothic,  they  produced  buildings  utterly  unsuited 
to  the  exigencies  and  conditions  of  modern  English  life, 
however  beautiful  they  might  be.  Now,  nothing  could 
be  a  more  flagrant  violation  of  the  spirit  of  Gothic,  than 
this  scrupulous  conformity  to  the  letter  of  Gothic.     The 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  155 

true  Gothic  architect  must  hold  fitness  and  use  in  view 
as  his  primary  end  ;  and  his  skill  is  shown  when  upon 
these  he  superinduces  beauty.  A  fortified  castle,  with 
moat  and  drawbridge,  arrow-slits,  and  donjon-keep,  was  a 
convenient  and  suitable  building  in  an  unsettled  and 
lawless  age.  It  is  a  most  inconvenient  and  unsuitable 
building  in  England  in  the  nineteenth  century ;  and 
while  we  should  prize  and  cherish  the  noble  specimens 
of  the  Edwardian  Castle  which  we  possess,  for  their 
beauty  and  their  associations,  we  ought  to  remember 
that  if  the  architects  who  built  them  were  living  now, 
they  would  be  the  first  to  lay  that  style  aside,  as  no 
longer  suitable  ;  and  they  would  show  the  true  Gothic 
taste  and  spirit  in  devising  dwellings  as  noble,  as  pic- 
turesque, as  interesting,  as  thoroughly  Gothic  in  charac- 
ter, but  fitted  for  the  present  age,  and  the  present  age's 
modes  of  life.  It  was  not  because  the  Edwardian  Castle 
was  grand  and  beautiful,  that  the  Edwardian  architects 
built  it  as  they  did  ;  they  built  it  as  they  did  because  that 
was  the  most  suitable  and  convenient  fashion  ;  and  upon 
fitness  and  use  they  engrafted  grandeur  and  beauty. 
And  it  is  not  by  a  slavish  imitation  of  ancient  details 
and  forms  that  we  shall  succeed  in  producing,  at  the 
present  day,  what  is  justly  entitled  to  be  called  Gothic 
architecture.  It  is  rather  by  a  free  development  and 
carrying  out  of  old  principles  applied  to  new  circum- 
stances and  requirements.  And  it  is  the  glory  of  Gothic, 
that  you  cannot  make  a  new  demand  upon  it  for  in- 
creased or  altered  accommodations  and  appliances,  which 
may  not,  in  the  hand  of  a  worthy  architect,  be  complied 
with,  not  only  without  diminution  of  beauty,  but  even 
with  increase  of  beauty.  It  is  beyond  comparison  the 
most  squeezable  of  all  styles  ;  and,  provided  the  squeez- 


156  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

ing  be  effected  by  a  master's  hand,  the  style  will  look 
all  the  better  for  it. 

There  is  a  floating  belief,  entirely  without  reason, 
that  Gothic  is  exclusively  an  ecclesiastical  fashion  of 
building.  Many  people  fancy  that  Gothic  architecture 
suits  a  church  ;  but  is  desecrated,  or  at  least  becomes 
unsuitable,  when  applied  to  secular  and  domestic  build- 
ings. There  can  be  no  doubt,  indeed,  that  to  every 
person  who  possesses  any  taste,  it  is  a  self-evident  axiom 
that  Gothic  is  the  true  church  architecture :  but  in  the 
age  during  which  the  noblest  Gothic  churches  were 
built,  it  was  never  fancied  that  churches  must  be  built  in 
one  style,  and  secular  buildings  in  a  style  essentially 
dissimilar.  The  belief  which  is  entertained  by  the  true 
lover  of  Gothic  architecture  is  this :  that  Gothic  is  es- 
sentially the  most  beautiful  architecture ;  that,  properly 
treated,  it  is  the  most  commodious  architecture ;  and 
that,  therefore,  the  Gothic  is  the  style  in  which  all  build- 
ings, sacred  or  secular,  public  or  domestic,  ought  to  be 
built ;  with  such  modifications  in  the  style  of  each  sep- 
arate building  as  its  special  purpose  and  use  shall  sug- 
gest. It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  Gothic  archi- 
tecture has  one  disadvantage  as  compared  with  that 
architecture  which  is  exhibited  in  Baker-street,  in  the 
London  suburban  terraces,  and  in  the  Manchester  cotton- 
mills.  Gothic  architecture  costs  more  money  ;  but,  in 
judicious  hands,  not  so  very  much  more. 

As  to  the  capacity  of  Gothic  architecture  to  accommo- 
date itself  to  houses  of  all  classes,  let  the  reader  ponder 
the  following  words : 

It  seems  to  be  generally  imagined  that  the  merits  of  the  Elizabe- 
than style  are  most  displayed  in  its  grand  baronial  residences,  such  as 
Burleigh  or  Hatfield.     I  think  quite  the  contrary.     A  style  is  best 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  157 

tested  by  reducing  it  to  its  humblest  conditions;  and  the  great  glory 
of  this  style  is,  not  that  it  produced  gorgeous  and  costly  mansions 
for  the  nobles  —  but  that  it  produced  beautifully  simple,  yet  perfectly 
architectural,  cottages  for  the  poor;  appropriate  and  comfortable 
farmhouses ;  and  pleasant-looking  residences  for  the  smaller  country- 
gentlemen,  and  for  the  inhabitants  of  country  towns  and  villages. 

Following  up  the  same  idea,  Mr.  Scott  somewhere  else 
says 

What  we  want  is  a  style  which  will  stand  this  test  —  which  will  be 
pleasing  in  its  most  normal  forms,  yet  be  susceptible  of  every  grada- 
tion of  beauty,  till  it  reach  the  noblest  and  most  exalted  objects  to 
which  art  can  aspire. 

Let  it  be  accepted  as  an  indubitable  axiom,  that  Gothic 
building  is  the  best  building  for  the  town  as  well  as  for 
the  country.  But  I  am  not  called  to  enter  upon  that 
controversial  ground ;  for  we  are  dealing  with  country 
houses,  in  regard  to  which  I  believe  there  is  no  difference 
of  opinion  among  people  of  taste  and  sense.  The  coun- 
try house,  as  of  course,  must  be  Gothic.  Tasteless 
blockheads  will  no  doubt  say  that  the  Gothic  house  is  all 
frippery  and  gingerbread  (as  indeed  houses  of  confec- 
tioner's Gothic  very  often  are)  :  they  will  chuckle  with 
delight  whenever  they  hear  that  the  rain  has  penetrated 
where  the  roof  of  a  bay-window  joins  the  wall,  or 
through  some  ill-contrived  gutter  in  the  irregular  roof  of 
the  house :  they  will  maintain,  in  the  face  of  fact,  that 
Gothic  windows  will  not  admit  sufficient  light,  and  can- 
not exclude  draughts :  and  they  will  praise  the  unpre- 
tending square-built  house,  '  with  no  nonsense  about  it.' 
Let  us  leave  such  tasteless  people  to  the  contemplation 
of  the  monstrosities  they  love  :  when  the  question  is  one 
of  grace  or  beauty,  their  opinion  is  (as  Coleridge  used  to 
say)  '  neither  here  nor  there.'  Granting  (which  we  do 
not  grant)  that  Gothic  architecture  is  out  of  place  in  the 


158  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

town,  and  congenial  and  suitable  in  the  country,  I  do  not 
know  that  we  could  pay  to  that  style  any  higher  tribute 
than  to  say  that  it  is  the  most  seemly  and  suitable  to  be 
placed  in  conjunction  with  the  fairest  scenes  of  nature. 
I  do  not  think  we  could  say  better  of  any  work  of  man, 
than  that  it  bears  with  advantage  to  be  set  side  by  side 
with  the  noblest  works  of  God.  Yet,  though  a  worthy 
Gothic  building  looks  beautiful  anywhere,  it  has  a  special 
charm  in  a  sweet  country  landscape.  It  seems  just 
what  Avas  wanted  to  render  the  scene  perfect.  It  is  in 
harmony  with  the  trees  and  flowers  and  hills  around,  and 
with  the  blue  sky  overhead.  It  is  a  perpetual  pleasure 
to  look  at  it.  I  do  not  believe  that  any  mortal  can  find 
real  enjoyment  in  standing  and  gazing  at  a  huge  square 
house,  with  a  great  wagon  roof,  and  with  square  holes 
cut  in  a  great  level  blank  wall  for  windows.  It  may 
draw  a  certain  grandeur  from  vast  size  :  and  it  may  pos- 
sess fine  accessories, — be  shadowed  by  noble  trees, 
backed  by  wild  or  wooded  hills,  and  shaded  off  into 
the  fields  and  lawns  by  courtly  terraces ;  but  the  big 
square  box  is  in  itself  ugly,  and  never  can  be  any- 
thing but  ugly.  But  how  long  and  delightedly  one 
can  contemplate  the  worthy  Gothic  house  of  similar  pre- 
tension —  with  its  lights  and  shadows,  its  irregular  sky- 
line, its  great  mullioned  bay-windows  and  its  graceful 
oriels  perched  aloft,  its  many  gables,  its  wreathed  chim- 
neys, its  towers  and  pinnacles,  its  hall  and  chapel  boldly 
shown  on  the  external  outline  :  —  for  the  characteristic  of 
Gothic  is,  that  it  frankly  exhibits  construction,  and  makes 
a  beauty  of  the  exhibition;  while  the  square-box  archi- 
tecture aims  at  concealing  construction,  —  producing  the 
four  walls,  pierced  with  the  regular  rows  of  window-, 
quite  irrespective  of  internal  requirements,  and  then  con- 


AND   COUNTRY   LIFE.  159 

sidering  bow  to  fit  in  the  requisite  apartments,  like  the 
pieces  of  a  child's  dissected  puzzle,  into  the  square  case 
made  for  them.  Then  Gothic  admits,  and  indeed 
invites,  the  use  of  external  colouring :  and  if  that  were 
only  accomplished  by  the  judicious  employment  of  those 
bricks  of  different  colours  which  have  lately  been  brought 
to  great  perfection,  the  charm  which  the  entire  building 
possesses  to  please  the  eye  is  indefinitely  increased.  Only 
let  it  be  remembered  by  every  man  who  builds  a  Gothic 
country  house,  that  it  must  be  built  with  much  taste  and 
judgment.  Gothic  is  an  ambitious  style;  and  it  is 
especially  so  in  the  present  state  of  feeling  in  England 
with  regard  to  it.  We  do  not  think  of  criticising  a  com- 
mon square  house.  The  taste  is  never  called  into  play 
when  we  look  at  it.  It  is  taken  for  granted,  a  priori, 
that  it  must  be  ugly.  Not  so  with  a  Gothic  house. 
There  is  a  pretension  about  that.  The  Gothic  house 
invites  us  to  look  at  it ;  and,  of  course,  to  form  an 
opinion  of  it.  And  therefore,  if  it  be  ugly,  it  is  offen- 
sively ugly.  It  aims  high,  and  it  must  expect  severity  in 
case  of  failure.  The  square-box  house  comes  forward 
humbly :  it  is  a  goose,  and  does  not  pretend  to  fly.  And 
even  a  goose  is  respectable,  while  it  keeps  to  its  own 
line.  But  the  ugly  Gothic  house  is  a  goose  that  hath 
essayed  the  eagle's  flight ;  and  if  it  come  down  ignomin- 
iously  to  the  earth,  it  is  deservedly  laughed  at.  And  so, 
let  no  man  presume  to  build  a  country  house  without 
securing  the  services  of  a  thoroughly  good  architect. 
And  for  myself  I  can  say,  that  whenever  I  grow  a  rich 
man  and  build  a  Gothic  house,  the  architect  shall  be  Mr. 
Scott.  Indeed  a  person  of  moderate  means  would  be 
safe  in  seeking  the  advice  of  that  accomplished  gentle- 
man :  for  he  would,  it  is  evident,  take  pains  to  render 


160  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

even  a  very  small  house  a  pleasing  picture.  He  holds 
that  a  building  of  the  smallest  extent  affords  as  decided 
if  not  as  abundant  scope  for  fine  taste  and  careful  treat- 
ment, as  the  grandest  baronial  dwelling  in  Britain.  A  cot- 
tage may  be  quite  as  pretty  and  pleasing  as  a  castle  or  a 
palace  could  be  in  their  more  ambitious  style. 

Although  Gothic  architecture  has  an  unlimited  capac- 
ity of  adapting  itself  to  all  circumstances  and  exigencies, 
yet  there  is  a  freedom  about  a  country  site  which  suits 
it  bravely.  In  the  country  the  architect  is  not  ham- 
pered by  want  of  space :  he  is  not  tied  to  a  street-line 
beyond  which  he  must  not  project,  nor  fettered  by  muni- 
cipal regulations  as  to  the  height  or  sky-outline  of  his 
building.  He  may  spread  over  as  much  ground  as  he 
pleases.  And  the  only  restrictions  by  which  he  is  con- 
fined are  thus  set  out  by  Mr.  Scott,  in  terms  which  will 
commend  themselves  to  the  common  sense  of  all  read- 
ers :  — 

•  The  grand  principle  of  planning  is,  that  every  room  should  be  in  its 
right  position — both  positively  and  relatively  to  each  other — to  the 
approaches,  views,  and  aspect;  and  that  this  should  be  so  effected  as 
not  only  to  avoid  disturbing  architectural  beauty,  either  within  or 
without,  but  to  be  in  the  highest  degree  conducive  to  it. 

In   treating  of  Buildings  in  the    Country,   Mr.  Scott 
gives  us  some  account  of  his  ideal  of  houses  suited  to  all 
ranks  and  degrees  of  men.     Let  us  look  at  his  picture  of' 
what  a  villa  ought  to  be  :  — 

To  begin,  then,  with  the  ordinary  villa.  Its  characteristics  should 
be  quiet  cheerfulness  and  unpretending  comfort;  it  should,  both 
within  and  without,  be  the  very  embodiment  of  innocent  and  simple 
enjoyment.  No  foolish  affectation  of  rusticity,  but  the  reality  of 
everything  which  tends  to  the  appreciation  of  country  pleasures  in 
their  more  refined  form.  The  external  design  should  so  unite  itself 
with  the  natural  objects  around,  that  they  should  appear  necessary 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  1G1 

to  one  another,  and  that  neither  could  be  very  different  without  the 
other  suffering.  The  architecture  should  be  quiet  and  simple;  the 
material  that  most  suited  to  the  neighbourhood  —  neither  too  formal 
and  highly  finished,  nor  yet  too  rustic.  The  interior  should  partake 
of  the  same  general  feeling.  It  should  bear  no  resemblance  to  the 
formality  of  a  town  house;  the  rooms  should  be  moderate  in  height, 
and  not  too  rigidly  regular  in  form;  some  of  the  ceilings  should  show 
their  timbers  wholly  or  in  part;  some  of  the  windows  should,  if  it  suits 
the  position,  open  out  upon  the  garden  or  into  conservatories.  In 
most  situations  the  house  should  spread  wide  rather  than  run  up  high; 
but  circumstances  may  vary  this. 

I  ask  my  readers'  attention  to   the  paragraph  which 
follows  ;  it  contains  sound  social  philosophy :  — 

In  this  as  in  other  classes  of  house-building,  the  servants'  apart- 
ments should  be  well  cared  for.  They  should  be  allowed  a  fair  share 
in  the  enjoyments  provided  for  their  masters.  I  have  seen  houses 
replete  with  comfort  and  surrounded  with  beauty,  where,  when  you 
once  get  into  the  servants'  rooms,  you  might  as  well  be  in  a  prison. 
This  is  morally  wrong;  let  us  give  our  dependents  a  share  in  our 
pleasures,  and  they  will  serve  us  none  the  less  efficiently  for  it. 

Every  one  can  see  how  pleasant  and  cheerful  a  home 
a  villa  would  be  which  should  successfully  embody  Mr. 
Scott's  views  of  what  a  villa  ought  to  be.  Such  a  dwell- 
ing would  be  quite  within  the  reach  of  all  who  possess 
such  a  measure  of  income  as  in  this  country  now-a-days 
will  suffice  to  provide  those  things  which  are  the  necessa- 
ries of  life  to  people  brought  up  as  ladies  and  gentlemen. 
And  with  what  heart  and  vigour  a  man  would  set  himself 
to  laying  out  the  little  piece  of  land  around  his  house  — 
to  making  walks,  planting  clumps  of  evergreens,  and  per- 
haps leading  a  little  brooklet  through  his  domain  —  if  the 
house,  seen  from  every  point,  were  such  as  to  be  a  per- 
petual feast  to  the  eye  and  the  taste  !  I  heartily  wish 
that  the  poorest  clergyman  in  Britain  had  just  such  a 
parsonage  as  Mr.  Scott  has  depicted,  and  the  means  of 
living  in  it  without  undue  pinching  and  paring. 
11 


162  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

Then,  leaving  the  villa,  Mr.  Scott  points  out  with 
great  taste  and  moderation  what  the  cottage  should  be. 
Judiciously,  he  does  not  aim  at  too  much.  It  serves  no 
good  end  to  represent  the  beau  ideal  cottage  as  a  build- 
ing so  costly  to  erect  and  to  maintain,  that  landlords  of 
ordinary  means  get  frightened  at  the  mention  of  so  ex- 
pensive a  toy.  Cottages  may  be  built  so  as  to  be  very 
tasteful  and  pleasing,  while  yet  the  expense  of  their 
erection  is  so  moderate  that  labourers  tolerably  well  off 
can  afford  to  pay  such  a  rent  for  them  as  shall  render 
their  erection  by  no  means  an  unprofitable  investment  of 
money.  Not,  indeed,  that  a  landlord  who  feels  his 
responsibility  as  he  ought,  will  ever  desire  to  screw  a 
profit  out  of  his  cottagers ;  but  it  is  well  that  it  should  be 
known  that  it  need  not  entail  any  loss  whatever  to  pro- 
vide for  the  working  class  in  the  country,  dwellings  in 
which  the  requirements  of  comfort  and  decency  shall  be 
fulfilled.  The  merest  touch  from  an  artistic  hand  is 
often  all  that  is  needed  to  convert  an  ugly,  though  com- 
fortable, cottage  into  a  pretty  and  comfortable  one.  A 
cottage  built  of  flint,  dressed  and  reticulated  with  brick, 
with  wood  frames  and  mullions,  and  the  gables  of  timber, 
will  look  exceedingly  pleasing.  Even  of  such  inexpen- 
sive material  as  mud,  thatched  with  reeds,  a  very  pretty 
cottage  may  be  built.  The  truth  is,  that  nowhere  is 
taste  so  much  needed  as  in  building  with  cheap  matei'ials. 
A  good  architect  will  produce  a  building  which  will  form 
a  pleasing  picture,  at  as  small  a  cost  as  it  is  possible  to 
enclose  a  like  space  from  the  external  air  in  the  very 
ugliest  way.  Gracefulness  of  form  adds  nothing  to  the 
cost  of  material.  And  there  is  scope  for  the  finest  taste 
in  disposing  the  very  cheapest  materials  in  the  most  effec- 
tive and  graceful  fashion.     I  have  seen  a  church  (built, 


AND  COUNTEY  LIFE.  163 

indeed,  by  a  first-rate  architect)  which  was  a  beautiful 
picture,  both  without  and  within,  while  yet  it  cost  so 
little,  that  I  should  (if  I  were  a  betting  man)  be  content 
to  lay  any  odds  that  no  mortal  could  produce  a  building 
which  would  protect  an  equal  number  of  people  from  the 
weather  for  less  money,  though  with  unlimited  licence  as 
to  ugliness. 

The  material  mud  is  one's  ideal  of  the  very  shabbiest 
material  for  building  which  is  within  human  reach. 
Hovel  is  the  word  that  naturally  goes  with  mud.  Yet 
Mr.  Scott  once  built  a  large  parsonage,  which  cost  be- 
tween two  and  three  thousand  pounds,  of  mud,  thatched 
with  reeds.  Warmth  was  the  end  in  view.  I  have  no 
doubt  the  parsonage  proved  a  most  picturesque  and  quaint 
affair ;  and  if  I  could  find  out  where  it  is,  I  would  go 
some  distance  to  see  it. 

Having  given  us  his  idea  of  what  a  country  villa  and 
a  country  cottage  ought  to  be,  Mr.  Scott  proceeds  to  set 
out  his  ideal  of  the  home  of  the  nobleman  or  great  landed 
proprietor  :  — 

The  proper  expressions  for  a  country  mansion  of  the  higher  class  — 
the  residence  of  a  landed  proprietor  —  beyond  that  degree  of  dignity 
suited  to  the  condition  of  the  owner,  are  perhaps,  first,  a  friendly,  un- 
forbidding  air,  giving  the  idea  of  a  kind  of  patriarchal  hospitality;  a 
look  that  seems  to  invite  approach  rather  than  repel  it.  Secondly,  an 
air  which  appears  to  connect  it  with  the  history  of  the  country, 
and  a  style  which  belongs  to  it.  Thirdly,  a  character  which  harmo- 
nizes well  with  the  surrounding  scenery,  and  unites  itself  with  it,  as 
if  not  only  were  the  best  spot  chosen  for  the  house,  and  its  natural 
beauties  fostered  and  increased  so  as  to  render  this  the  central  focus, 
but  further,  that  the  house  itself  should  seem  to  be  the  very  thing 
which  was  necessary  to  give  the  last  touch  and  finish  to  the  scene  — 
the  object  for  which  nature  had  prepared  the  site,  and  without  which 
its  charms  would  be  incomplete. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  a  very  great  proportion 


164  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

of  the  more  ambitious  dwellings  of  this  country  signally 
fail  of  coming  up  to  these  conditions,  and  serve  only  to 
disfigure  the  beautiful  parks  in  which  they  stand.  A 
huge  Palladian  house  entirely  lacks  the  genial,  hearty, 
inviting  look  of  the  Elizabethan  or  Gothic  house.  In- 
stead  of  having  a  look  of  that  hospitality  and  welcome 
which  we  are  proud  to  think  of  as  especially  English,  the 
Palladian  mansion  is  merely  suggestive,  as  Mr.  Scott 
remarks,  of  gamekeepers  and  park-rangers  on  the  watch 
to  turn  all  intruders  out.  Our  author  would  have  the 
architect  who  is  entrusted  with  the  building  of  a  house  of 
this  class,  retain  in  its  design  all  that  is  practically  useful 
and  noble  in  the  Elizabethan  mansion  —  at  the  same  time 
remembering  that  Elizabethan  architecture  is  Gothic 
somewhat  debased,  and  that  its  details,  where  faulty, 
should  be  set  aside,  and  their  place  supplied  by  those  of 
an  earlier  and  purer  period.  Nor  should  it  be  forgotten 
that  the  purest  and  noblest  Gothic  is  the  most  willing  to 
bend  itself  to  the  requirements  of  altered  circumstances  : 
and  it  is  therefore  needful  that  the  architect,  in  forming 
his  plan,  should  hold  it  steadily  in  view  that  he  is  building 
a  house  which  is  to  be  inhabited  by  a  nobleman  or  gentle- 
man of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century;  and  which 
must  therefore  be  thoroughly  suited  to  the  demands  of  our 
own  day,  and  our  own  day's  modes  and  habits  of  thought 
and  life.  And  the  castle  and  the  abbey,  though  both 
quite  unfit  to  be  taken  as  models  out-and-out,  may  yet 
supply  hints  for  noble  and  dignified  details  in  the  design- 
ing of  a  modern  English  home.  Thus,  borrowing  ideas 
from  all  quarters,  Mr.  Scott  would  produce  a  noble  dwell- 
ing —  strictly  Gothic  in  design  —  thoroughly  English  in 
its  entire  character  —  at  once  majestic  and  comfortable  — 
at  once  dignified  and  inviting  —  with  a  medieval  nobility 


AND  COUNTRY  LIFE.  165 

of  aspect,  and  with  the  reality  of  every  arrangement 
which  our  advanced  civilization  and  increased  refinement 
can  require  or  suggest.  As  for  lesser  details,  is  there 
not  something  in  the  following  passage  which  makes  an 
architectural  epicure's  mouth  water? 

The  chapel  and  corridors  perhaps  richly  vaulted  in  stone  —  the  hall 
nohly  roofed  with  oak  —  the  ceilings  of  the  rooms  either  boldly  show- 
ing their  timbers,  partially  or  throughout,  or  richly  panelled  with 
wood;  or  if  plastei-ed,  treated  genuinely  and  truthfully,  without  aping 
ideas  borrowed  from  other  materials :  the  floors  of  halls  and  passages 
paved  with  stone,  tile,  marble,  enriched  with  incised  or  tessellated 
work,  or  a  union  of  all ;  those  of  the  leading  apartments  of  polished 
oak  and  parqueterie  (the  rendering  of  mosaic  into  wood);  rich  wain- 
scoting used  where  suitable,  and  the  woodwork  throughout  honestly 
treated,  and  of  character  proportioned  to  its  position,  not  neglecting 
the  use  of  inlaying  in  the  richer  woods;  marble  liberally  used  in  suit- 
able positions,  the  plainer  kinds  inlaid  and  studiously  contrasted  with 
the  richer;  the  coloured  decorations,  whether  of  walls  or  ceilings,  or 
in  stained  glass,  delicately  and  artistically  treated,  and  of  the  highest 
art  we  can  obtain,  and  everywhere  proportioned  to  their  position; 
historical  and  fresco  painting  freely  used,  and  in  a  style  at  once  suited 
to  the  architecture,  and  thoroughly  free  from  what  may  be  called 
mediajvalism,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  term  is  misused  to  imply  an 
antiquated,  grotesque,  or  imperfect  mode  of  drawing;  all  of  these,  and 
an  infinity  of  other  modes  of  ornamentation,  are  open  to  the  architect 
in  this  class  of  building. 

It  is  pleasant  to  read  well-written  descriptions  of  hu- 
man dwellings  in  which  art  has  done  all  it  can  do  towards 
providing  a  pleasant  and  beautiful  setting  for  human  life. 
Such  is  Mr.  Loudon's  account  of  what  he  calls  the  beau 
ideal  English  Villa,  in  his  Cyclopaedia  of  Rural  Archi- 
tecture. Such  is  Mr.  Scott's  sketch  of  the  beau  ideal  of  a 
nobleman's  house  at  the  present  day.  The  latter  forms 
a  pleasing  companion  picture  to  that  long  since  drawn 
by  the  affluent  imagination  of  Bacon.  All  who  have  a 
taste  for  such  things  will  read  it  with  great  delight ;  nor 


166  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES 

will  it  tend  in  the  least  degree  to  make  the  true  lover  of 
the  country  envious  or  discontented.  I  can  turn  with 
perfect  satisfaction  from  that  grand  description  to  my 
own  little  parsonage.  There  is  a  peculiar  comfort  and 
interest  about  a  little  place,  which  vanishes  with  increas- 
ing magnitude  and  magnificence.  And  it  is  a  law  of  all 
healthy  mind,  that  what  is  one's  own  has  an  attraction  for 
one's  self  far  beyond  that  possessed  by  much  finer  things 
which  belong  to  another.  A  man  with  one  little  country 
abode,  may  have  more  real  delight  in  it,  than  a  duke  has 
in  his  wide  demesnes.  Indeed,  I  heartily  pity  a  duke 
with  half-a-score  of  noble  houses.  He  can  never  have  a 
home  feeling  in  any  one  of  them.  While  the  possessor 
of  a  few  acres  knows  every  corner  and  every  tree  and 
shrub  in  his  little  realm  ;  and  knows  what  is  the  aspect 
of  each  upon  every  day  of  the  year.  I  speak  from  expe- 
rience. I  am  the  possessor  of  twelve  acres  of  mother 
earth ;  and  I  know  well  what  pleasure  and  interest  are  to 
be  found  in  the  little  affairs  of  that  limited  tract.  My 
study-window  looks  out  upon  a  corner  of  the  garden  ;  a 
blank  wall  faces  it  at  a  distance  of  five-and-twenty  feet. 
When  I  came  here,  I  found  that  corner  sown  with  pota- 
toes, and  that  wall  a  dead  expanse  of  stone  and  mortar. 
But  I  resolved  to  make  the  most  of  my  narrow  view,  and 
so  contrive  that  it  should  look  cheerful  at  every  season. 
And  now  the  corner  is  a  little  square  of  as  soft  and  well- 
shaven  green  turf  as  can  be  seen  ;  through  which  snow- 
drops and  crocuses  peep  in  early  spring ;  its  surface  is 
broken  by  two  clumps  of  evergreens,  laurels,  hollies, 
cedars,  yews,  which  look  warm  and  pleasant  all  the 
winter-time  ;  and  over  one  clump  rises  a  standard  rose  of 
ten  feet  in  height,  which,  as  I  look  up  from  my  desk 
through  my  window,  shows  like  a  crimson  cloud  in  sum- 


AND   COUNTRY  LIFE.  167 

mer.  The  blank  wall  is  blank  no  more,  but  beautiful 
with  climbing  roses,  honeysuckle,  fuchsias,  and  variegated 
ivy.  What  a  pleasure  it  was  to  me,  the  making  of  this 
little  improvement ;  and  what  a  pleasure  it  is  still  every 
time  I  look  at  it !  No  one  can  sympathize  justly  with 
the  feeling  till  he  tries  something  of  the  sort  for  himself. 
And  not  merely  is  such  occupation  as  that  which  I  speak 
of  a  most  wholesome  diversity  from  mental  work.  It  has 
many  other  advantages.  It  leads  to  a  more  intelligent 
delight  in  the  fairest  works  of  the  Creator ;  and  though 
it  might  be  hard  to  explain  the  logical  steps  of  the  pro- 
cess, it  leads  a  man  to  a  more  kindly  and  sympathetic 
feeling  towards  all  his  fellow  men.  Have  not  I,  unfaith- 
ful that  I  am,  spent  the  forenoon  in  writing  a  very  sharp 
review  of  some  foolish  book  ;  and  then,  having  gone  out 
to  the  garden  for  two  or  thx*ee  hours,  come  in,  thinking 
that  after  all  it  would  be  cruel  to  give  pain  to  the  poor 
fellow  who  wrote  it ;  and  so  proceeded  to  weed  out  every- 
thing severe,  and  give  the  entire  article  a  rather  compli- 
mentary turn ! 

It  is  a  vain  fancy  to  try  to  sketch  out  the  kind  of  life 
which  is  to  be  led  in  the  country  house  after  we  get  it. 
For  almost  every  man  gradually  settles  into  a  habitude 
of  being  which  is  rather  formed  by  circumstances  than 
adopted  of  purpose  and  by  choice.  Only  let  it  be  re- 
membered, that  pleasure  disappears  when  it  is  sought  as 
an  end.  Happiness  is  a  thing  that  is  come  upon  incident- 
ally, while  we  are  looking  for  something  else.  The  man 
who  would  enjoy  country  life  in  a  country  home,  must 
have  an  earnest  occupation  besides  the  making  and  de- 
lighting in  his  home,  and  the  sweet  scenes  which  sur- 
round it.     If  that  be  all  he  has  to  do,  he  will  soon  turn 


168  CONCERNING  COUNTRY  HOUSES. 

weary,  and  find  that  life,  and  the  interest  of  life,  have 
stagnated  and  scummed  over.  The  end  of  work  is  to  en- 
joy leisure;  but  to  enjoy  leisure  one  must  have  performed 
work.  It  will  not  do  to  make  the  recreation  of  life  the 
business  of  life.  But  I  believe,  that  to  the  man  who  has 
a  worthy  occupation  to  fill  up  his  busy  hours,  there  is  no 
purer  or  more  happy  recreation  than  may  be  found  in  the 
cares  and  interests  of  the  country  home. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
CONCERNING  TIDINESS : 

BEING*  THOUGHTS    UPON   AN    OVERLOOKED    SOURCE   OF 
HUMAN    CONTENT. 


0>  AID  Sydney  Smith  to  a  lady  who  asked  him 
to  recommend  a  remedy  for  low  spirits, — 
Always  have  a  cheerful,  bright  fire,  a  kettle 
§ji    simmering  on  the  hob,  and  a  paper  of  sugar- 
plums on  the  mantlepiece. 

Modern  grates,  it  is  known,  have  no  hobs;  nor  does  it 
clearly  appear  for  what  purpose  the  kettle  was  recom- 
mended. If  for  the  production  of  frequent  cups  of  tea, 
I  am  not  sure  that  the  abundant  use  of  that  somewhat  ner- 
vous and  vaporous  liquid  is  likely  to  conduce  to  an  equa- 
ble cheerfulness.  And  Sydney  Smith,  although  he  must 
have  become  well  acquainted  with  whisky-toddy  during 
his  years  in  Edinburgh,  would  hardly  have  advised  a 
lady  to  have  recourse  to  alcoholic  exhilaration,  with  its 
perilous  tendencies  and  its  subsequent  depression.  Sugar- 
plums, again,  damage  the  teeth,  and  produce  an  effect  the 
reverse  of  salutary  upon  a  most  important  organ,  whose 
condition  directly  affects  the  spirits.  As  for  the  bright 
fire,  there  the  genial  theologian  was  certainly  right :  for 
when  we  talk,  as  we  naturally  do,  of  a  cheerful  fire,  we 
testify  that  long  experience  has  proved  that  this  peculiar- 


170  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

ly  British  institution  tends  to  make  people  cheerful.  But, 
without  committing  myself  to  any  approval  of  the  par- 
ticular things  recommended  by  Sydney  Smith,  I  heartily 
assent  to  the  principle  which  is  implied  in  his  advice  to 
the  nervous  lady :  to  wit,  that  cheerfulness  and  content 
are  to  a  great  degree  the  result  of  outward  and  physical 
conditions ;  let  me  add,  the  result  of  very  little  things. 

Time  was,  in  which  happiness  was  regarded  as  being 
perhaps  too  much  a  matter  of  one's  outward  lot.  Such 
is  the  belief  of  a  primitive  age  and  an  untutored  race. 
Every  one  was  to  be  happy,  whatever  his  mental  condi- 
tion, who  could  but  find  admittance  to  Rasselas'  Happy  Val- 
ley. The  popular  belief  that  there  might  be  a  scene  so  fair 
that  it  would  make  blest  any  human  being  who  should  be 
allowed  to  dwell  in  it,  is  strongly  shown  in  the  name  uni- 
versally given  to  the  spot  which  was  inhabited  by  the  par- 
ents of  the  race  before  evil  was  known.  It  was  the 
Garden  of  Delight :  and  the  name  describes  not  the  beauty 
of  the  scene  itself,  but  the  effect  it  would  produce  upon 
the  mind  of  its  tenants.  The  paradises  of  all  rude  na- 
tions are  places  which  profess  to  make  every  one  happy 
who  enters  them,  quite  apart  from  any  consideration  of 
the  world  which  he  might  bear  within  his  own  breast. 
And  the  pleasures  of  these  paradises  are  mainly  ad- 
dressed to  sense.  The  gross  Esquimaux  went  direct  to 
eating  and  drinking :  and  so  his  heaven  (if  we  may  be- 
lieve Dr.  Johnson)  is  a  place  where  '  oil  is  always 
fresh,  and  provisions  always  warm.'  He  could  conceive 
nothing  loftier  than  the  absence  of  cold  meat,  and  the 
presence  of  unlimited  blubber.  Quite  as  gross  was  the 
Paradise  of  the  Moslem,  with  its  black-eyed  houris,  and 
its  musk-sealed  wine :  and  the  same  principle,  that  the 
outward  scene  and  circumstances  in  which  a  man  is  placed 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  171 

are  able  to  make  him  perfectly  and  unfailingly  happy, 
whatever  he  himself  may  be,  is  taken  for  granted  in  all 
we  are  told  of  the  Scandinavian  Valhalla,  the  Amenti  of 
the  old  Egyptian,  the  Peruvian's  Spirit-World,  and  the 
Red  Man's  Land  of  Souls.  But  the  Christian  Heaven, 
with  deeper  truth,  is  less  a  locality  than  a  character :  its 
happiness  being  a  relation  between  the  employments  pro- 
vided, and  the  mental  condition  of  those  who  engage  in 
them.  It  was  a  grand  and  a  noble  thing,  too,  when  a 
Creed  came  forth,  which  utterly  repudiated  the  notion  of 
a  Fortunate  Island,  into  which,  after  any  life  you  liked, 
vou  had  only  to  smuggle  yourself,  and  all  was  well.  It 
was  a  grand  thing,  and  an  intensely  practical  thing,  to 
point  to  an  unseen  world,  which  will  make  happy  the 
man  who  is  prepared  for  it,  and  who  is  fit  for  it ;  and  no 
one  else. 

And,  to  come  down  to  the  enjoyments  of  daily  life, 
the  time  was  when  happiness  was  too  much  made  a  thing 
of  a  quiet  home,  of  a  comfortable  competence,  of  climbing 
roses  and  honeysuckle,  of  daisies  and  buttercups,  of  new 
milk  and  fresh  eggs,  of  evening  bells  and  mist  stealing 
up  from  the  river  in  the  twilight,  of  warm  firesides,  and 
close-drawn  curtains,  and  mellow  lamps,  and  hissing  urns, 
and  cups  of  tea,  and  easy  chairs,  and  old  songs,  and 
plenty  of  books,  and  laughing  girls,  and  perhaps  a  gentle 
wife  and  a  limited  number  of  peculiarly  well-behaved 
children.  And  indeed  it  cannot  be  denied  that  if  these 
things,  with  health  and  a  good  conscience,  do  not  neces- 
sarily make  a  man  contented,  they  are  very  likely  to  do 
so.  One  cannot  but  sympathize  with  the  spirit  of  snugness 
and  comfort  which  breathes  from  Cowpez^'s  often-quoted 
lines,  though  there  is  something  of  a  fallacy  in  them. 
Here  they  are  again  :  they  are  pleasant  to  look  at :  — 


172  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

Now  stir  the  fire,  and  close  the  shutters  fast, 
Let  fall  the  curtains,  wheel  the  sofa  round, 
And  while  the  bubbling  and  loud-hissing  urn 
Throws  up  a  steamy  column,  and  the  cups 
That  cheer,  but  not  inebriate,  wait  on  each, 
So  let  us  welcome  peaceful  evening  in. 

I  have  said  there  is  a  fallacy  in  these  lines.  It  is  not 
that  they  state  anything  which  is  not  quite  correct,  but 
that  they  contain  a  sttggestio  falsi.  Although  Cowper 
does  not  directly  say  so,  you  see  he  leaves  on  your  mind 
the  impression  that  if  all  these  arrangements  are  made 
• —  the  fire  stirred,  the  curtains  drawn,  the  sofa  wheeled 
round,  and  so  forth  —  you  are  quite  sure  to  be  extremely 
jolly,  and  to  spend  a  remarkably  pleasant  evening.  Now 
the  fact  is  quite  otherwise.  You  may  have  so  much 
anxiety  and  care  at  your  heart,  as  shall  entirely  neutral- 
ize the  natural  tendency  of  all  these  little  bits  of  outward 
comfort ;  and  no  one  knew  that  better  than  the  poor 
poet  himself.  But  that  which  Cowper  does  but  insinu- 
ate, an  unknown  verse-writer  boldly  asserts  :  to  wit,  that 
outward  conditions  are  able  to  make  a  man  as  happy  as  it 
is  possible  for  man  to  be.  He  writes  in  the  style  which 
was  common  a  couple  of  generations  back:  but  he  really 
makes  a  pleasant  homely  picture  :  — 

The  hearth  was  clean,  the  fire  was  clear, 

The  kettle  on  for  tea; 
Palemon  in  his  elbow-chair, 

As  blest  as  man  could  be. 

Clarinda,  who  his  heart  possessed, 

And  was  his  new-made  bride, 
With  bead  reclined  upon  his  breast, 

Sat  toying  by  his  side. 

Stretched  at  his  feet,  in  happy  state, 
A  favourite  dog  was  laid, 


.  CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  173 

By  whom  a  little  sportive  cat, 
In  wanton  humour  played. 

Clarinda's  hand  he  gently  pressed: 

She  stole  a  silent  kiss; 
And,  blushing,  modestly  confessed 

The  fulness  of  her  bliss. 

Palemon,  with  a  heart  elate, 

Prayed  to  Almighty  Jove, 
That  it  might  ever  be  his  fate, 

Just  so  to  live  and  love. 

Be  this  eternity,  he  cried, 

And  let  no  more  be  given; 
Continue  thus  my  loved  fireside,  — 

I  ask  no  other  heaven ! 

Poor  fellow !  It  is  very  evident  that  he  had  not  been 
married  long.  And  it  is  charitable  to  attribute  the  won- 
derful extravagance  of  his  sentiments  to  temporary 
excitement  and  obfuscation.  But  without  saying  any- 
thing of  his  concluding  wish,  which  appears  to  border  on 
the  profane,  we  see  in  his  verses  the  expression  of  the 
rude  belief  that,  given  certain  outward  circumstances,  a 
man  is  sure  to  be  happy. 

Perhaps  the  pendulum  has  of  late  years  swung  rather 
too  far  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  we  have  learned  to 
make  too  little  of  external  things.  No  doubt  the  true 
causes  of  happiness  are  inter  -prcecordia*  No  doubt  it 
touches  us  most  closely,  whether  the  world  within  the 
breast  is  bright  or  dark.  No  doubt  content,  happiness, 
our  being's  end  and  aim,  call  it  what  you  will,  is  an 
inward  thing,  as  was  said  long  ago  by  the  Latin  poet,  in 
words  which  old  Lord  Auchinleck  (the  father  of  John- 
son's Boswell)  inscribed  high  on  the  front  of  the  mansion 
which  he  built  amid  the  Scottish  woods  and  rocks  '  where 
Lugar  tlows  : '  — 


174  CONCERNING   TIDINESS. 

Quod  petis,  Lie  est ; 
Est  Ulubris :  animus  si  te  non  deficit  asquus. 

But  then  the  question  is,  how  to  get  the  animus  cequus: 
and  I  think  that  now-a-days  there  is  with  some  a  disposi- 
tion to  push  the  principle  of 

My  mind  to  me  a  kingdom  is, 

too  far.  Happiness  is  indeed  a  mental  condition,  but  we 
are  not  to  forget  that  mental  states  are  very  strongly, 
very  directly,  and  very  regularly  affected  and  produced 
by  outward  causes.  In  the  vast  majority  of  men  outward 
circumstances  are  the  great  causes  of  inward  feelings,  and 
you  can  count  almost  as  certainly  upon  making  a  man 
jolly  by  placing  him  in  happy  circumstances,  as  upon 
making  a  man  wet  by  dipping  him  in  watex*.  And  I  be- 
lieve a  life  which  is  too  subjective  is  a  morbid  thing.  It 
is  not  healthy  nor  desirable  that  the  mind's  shadow  and 
sunshine  should  come  too  much  from  the  mind  itself.  I 
believe  that  when  this  is  so,  it  is  generally  the  result  of 
a  weak  physical  constitution :  and  it  goes  along  with  a 
poor  appetite  and  shaky  nerves  :  and  so  I  hail  Sydney 
Smith's  recommendation  of  sugar-plums,  bright  fires,  and 
simmering  kettles,  as  the  recognition  of  the  grand  princi- 
ple that  mental  moods  are  to  a  vast  extent  the  result  of 
outward  conditions  and  of  physical  state.  If  Macbeth 
had  asked  Dr.  Forbes  Winslow  the  question  — 

Canst  thou  not  minister  to  a  mind  diseased? 

that  eminent  physician  would  instantly  have  replied, — 
'  Of  course  I  can,  by  ministering  to  a  body  diseased.'  No 
doubt  such  mental  disease  as  Macbeth's  is  beyond  the 
reach  of  opiate  or  purgative,  and  neither  sin  nor  remorse 
can  be  cured  by  sugar-plums.  But  as  for  the  little  de- 
pressions and  troubles  of  daily  life,  I  believe  that  Sydney 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  175 

Smith  proposed  to   treat  them   soundly.      Treat   them 
physically.      Treat  them   ah  extra.      Don't  expect  the 
mind  to  originate  much  good  for  itself.     With  common- 
place people  it  is  mainly  dependent  upon  external  influ- 
ences.     It  is  not  a  perennial  fountain,  but  a  tank  which 
must  be  replenished  from  external  springs.     For  myself, 
I  never  found  my  mind  to  be  to  me  a  kingdom.     If  a 
kingdom  at  all,  it  was  a  very  sterile  one,  and  a  very  un- 
ruly one.     I  have  generally  found  myself,  as  my  readers 
have  no  doubt  sometimes  done,  a  most  wearisome  and 
stupid  companion.      If  any  man  wishes  to  know  the  con- 
sequence  of  being  left  to  his  own  mental  resources,  let 
him  shut  himself  up  for  a  week,  without  books  or  writing 
materials  or  companions,  in  a  chamber  lighted  from  the 
roof.     He  will  be  very  sick  of  himself  before  the  week  is 
over  :  he  will  (I  speak  of  commonplace  men)  be  in  toler- 
ably low  spirits.      The  effect  of  solitary  confinement,  we 
know  upon  uneducated  prisoners,  is  to  drive  them  mad. 
And  not  only  do  outward  circumstances  mainly  make  and 
unmake  our  cheerfulness,  but  they  affect  our  intellectual 
powers  just  as  powerfully.     They  spur  or  they  dull  us. 
Till  you  enjoy,  after  long  deprivation,  the  blessing  of  con- 
verse with  a  man  of  high  intellect  and  cultivation,  you  do 
not  know  how  much  there  is  in  you.     Your  powers  are 
stimulated  to  produce  thought  of  which  you  would  not 
have  believed  yourself  capable.     And  have  not  you  felt, 
dear  reader,  when  in  the  society  of  a  blockhead,  that  you 
became  a  blockhead  too  ?      Did  you  not  feel  your  mind 
sensibly  contracting,  like  a  ball  of  india-rubber,  when 
compressed  by  the  dead  weight  of  the  surrounding  atmos- 
phere of  stupidity  ?     But  when  you  had  a  quiet  evening 
with  your  friend  Dr.   Smith,  or  Mr.  Jones,  a  brilliant 
talker,  did  he  not  make  you  talk  too  with  (comparative) 


176  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

brilliancy  ?  You  found  yourself  saying  much  cleverer 
things  than  you  had  been  able  to  say  for  months  past. 
The  machinery  of  your  mind  played  fervidly  ;  words 
came  fittingly,  and  thoughts  came  crowding.  The  fric- 
tion of  two  minds  of  a  superior  class,  will  educe  from 
each  much  finer  thought  than  either  could  have  produced 
when  alone. 

And  now,  my  friendly  reader,  the  upshot  of  all  this 
which  I  have  been  saying  is,  that  I  desire  to  recommend 
to  you  a  certain  overlooked  and  undervalued  thing,  which 
I  believe  to  be  a  great  source  of  content  and  a  great  keep- 
er-off of  depression.  I  desire  to  recommend  something 
which  I  think  ought  to  supplant  Sydney  Smith's  kettle 
and  sugar-plums,  and  which  may  co-exist  nicely  with  his 
cheerful  fire.  And  I  beg  the  reader  to  remark  what  the 
end  is  towards  which  I  am  to  prescribe  a  means.  It  is 
not  suprema  felicitas  :  it  is  quiet  content.  The  happiness 
which  we  expect  at  middle  age  is  a  calm,  homely  thing. 
We  don't  want  raptures  :  they  weary  us,  they  wear  us 
out,  they  shatter  us.  We  want  quiet  content;  and 
above  all,  we  want  to  be  kept  clear  of  over-anxiety  and 
of  causeless  depression.  As  for  such  buoyancy  as  that  of 
Sydney  Smith  himself,  who  tells  us  that  when  a  man  of 
forty  he  often  longed  to  jump  over  the  tables  and  chairs 
in  pure  glee  and  light-heartedness,  —  why,  if  nature  has 
not  given  you  that,  you  must  just  do  without  it.  Art  can- 
not give  it  you  :  it  must  come  spontaneous  if  it  come  at  all. 
But  what  a  precious  thing  it  is !  Very  truly  did  David 
Hume  say,  that  for  a  man  to  be  born  with  a  fixed  dispo- 
sition always  to  look  at  the  bright  side  of  things,  was  a 
far  happier  thing  than  to  be  born  to  a  fortune  of  ten 
thousand  a  year.  But  Hume  was  right,  too,  when  he 
talked  of  being  born  with  such  a  disposition.     The  hope- 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  177 

ful,  unanxious  man,  quite  as  truly  as  the  poet,  nascitur, 
noil  Jit.  No  training  could  ever  have  made  the  nervous, 
shrinking,  evil-foreboding  Charlotte  Bronte  like  the  glee- 
ful, boisterous,  life-enjoying  Christopher  North.  There 
were  not  pounds  enough  in  that  little  body  to  keep  up  a 
spirit  like  that  which  dwelt  in  the  Scotch  Professor's 
stalwart  frame.  And  to  indicate  a  royal  road  to  constant 
light-heartedness  is  what  no  man  in  his  senses  will  pre- 
tend to  do.  But  we  may  attain  to  something  humbler. 
Sober  content  is,  I  believe,  within  the  reach  of  all  who 
have  nothing;  graver  to  vex  them  than  what  James  Mont- 
gomery  the  poet  called  the  '  insect  cares '  of  daily  life. 
There  may  be,  of  course,  lots  which  are  darkened  over 
by  misfortunes  so  deep  that  to  brighten  them  all  human 
skill  would  be  unavailing.  But  ye  who  are  commonplace 
people,  —  commonplace  in  understanding,  in  feeling,  in 
circumstances ;  ye  who  are  not  very  clever,  not  extraor- 
dinarily excitable,  not  extremely  unlucky  ;  ye  who  de- 
sire to  be,  day  by  day,  equably  content  and  even  pass- 
ably cheerful ;  listen  to  me  while  I  recommend,  in  sub- 
ordination of  course  to  something;  too  serious  to  discuss 
upon  this  half-earnest  page,  the  maintenance  of  a  con- 
stant, pervading,  active,  all-reaching,  energetic  Tidi- 
ness ! 

No  fire  that  ever  blazed,  no  kettle  that  ever  simmered, 
no  sugar-plums  that  ever  jsorroded  the  teeth  audi  soothed 
to  tranquil  stupidity,  could  do  half  as  much  to  maintain  a 
human  being  in  a  condition  of  moderate  jollity  and  satis- 
faction, as  a  daily  resolute  carrying  out  of  the  resolution, 
that  everything  about  us,  —  our  house,  our  wardrobe,  our 
books,  our  papers,  our  study-table,  our  garden-walks,  our 
carriage,  our  harness,  our  park-fences,  our  children,  our 
lamps,  our   gloves,  yea,  our  walking-stick  and  our  urn- 

12 


178  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

brella,  shall  be  in  perfectly  accurate  order  ;  that  is,  shall 
be,  to  a  hair's  breadth,  Eight  ! 

If  you,  my  reader,  get  up  in  the  morning,  as  you  are 
very  likely  to  do  in  this  age  of  late  dinners,  somewhat 
out  of  spirits,  and  feeling  (as  boys  expressively  phrase  it), 
rather  down  in  the  mouth,  you  cannot  tell  why ;  if  you 
take  your  bath  and  dress,  having  still  the  feeling  as  if  the 
day  had  come  too  soon,  before  you  had  gathered  up  heart 
to  face  it  and  its  duties  and  troubles  ;  and  if,  on  coming 
down  stairs,  you  find  your  breakfast-parlour  all  in  the 
highest  degree  snug  and  tidy,  —  the  fire  blazing  brightly 
and  warmly,  the  fire-irons  accurately  arranged,  the 
hearth  clean,  the  carpet  swept,  the  chairs  dusted,  the 
breakfast  equipage  neatly  arranged  upon  the  snow-white 
cloth,  —  it  is  perfectly  wonderful  how  all  this  will  bright- 
en you  up.  You  will  feel  that  you  would  be  a  growling 
humbug  if  you  did  not  become  thankful  and  content. 
*  Order  is  Heaven's  first  law : '  and  there  is  a  sensible 
pleasure  attending  the  carrying  of  it  faithfully  out  to  the 
smallest  things.  Tidiness  is  nothing  else  than  the  carry- 
ing into  the  hundreds  of  little  matters  which  meet  us 
and  touch  us  hour  by  hour,  the  same  grand  principle 
which  directs  the  sublimest  magnitudes  and  affairs  of  the 
universe.  Tidiness  is,  in  short,  the  being  right  in  thou- 
sands of  small  concerns  in  which  most  men  are  slovenly 
satisfied  to  be  wrong.  And  though  a  hair's  breadth  may 
make  the  difference  between  right  and  wrong,  the  differ- 
ence between  right  and  wrong  is  not  a  little  difference. 
An  untidy  person  is  a  person  who  is  wrong,  and  is  doing 
wrong,  for  several  hours  every  day ;  and  though  the 
wrong  may  not  be  grave  enough  to  be  indicated  by  a 
power  so  solemn  as  conscience  (as  the  current  through 
the  Atlantic   cable   after  it  had  been  injured,  though  a 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  179 

magnetic  current,  was  too  faint  to  be  indicated  by  tbe 
machines  now  in  use),  still,  constant  wrong-doing,  in  how- 
ever slight  a  degree,  cannot  be  without  a  jar  of  the 
entire  moral  nature.  It  cannot  be  without  putting  us  out 
of  harmony  with  the  entire  economy  under  which  we 
live.  And  thus  it  is  that  the  most  particular  old  bache- 
lor, or  the  most  precise  old  maid,  who  insists  upon  every- 
thing about  the  house  being  in  perfect  order,  is,  in  so  far, 
co-operating  with  the  great  plan  of  Providence  ;  and,  like 
every  one  who  does  so,  finds  an  innocent  pleasure  result 
from  that  unintended  harmony.  Tidiness  is  a  great 
source  of  cheerfulness.  It  is  cheering,  I  have  said,  even 
to  come  into  one's  breakfast  room,  and  find  it  spotlessly 
tidy ;  but  still  more  certainly  will  this  cheerfulness  come 
if  the  tidiness  is  the  result  of  our  own  exertion. 

And  so  I  counsel  you,  my  friend,  if  you  are  ever  dis- 
heartened about  some  example  which  has  been  pressed 
upon  you  of  the  evil  which  there  is  in  this  world  ;  if  you 
get  vexed  and  worried  and  depressed  about  some  evil  in 
the  government  of  your  country,  or  of  your  county,  or  of 
your  parish  ;  if  you  have  done  all  you  can  to  think  how 
the  evil  may  be  remedied ;  and  if  you  know  that  further 
brooding  over  the  subject  would  only  vex  and  sting  and 
do  no  good ;  —  if  all  this  should  ever  be  so,  then  I  coun- 
sel you  to  have  resort  to  the  great  refuge  of  Tidiness. 
Don't  sit  over  your  library  fire,  brooding  and  bothering  ; 
don't  fly  to  sugar-plums,  they  will  not  avail.  There  is  a 
corner  of  one  of  your  fields  that  is  grown  up  with  net- 
tles ;  there  is  a  bit  of  wall  or  of  palisade  out  of  repair ; 
there  is  a  yard  of  the  edging  of  a  shrubbery  walk  where 
an  overhanging  laurel  has  killed  the  turf;  there  is  a  bed 
in  the  garden  which  is  not  so  scrupulously  tidy  as  it 
ought  to  be ;  there  is  a  branch  of  a  peach-tree  that  has 


180  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

pulled  out  its  fastenings  to  the  wall,  and  that   is  flapping 
about  in  the  wind.     Or  there    is    a   drawer   of    papers 
which    has   for  weeks    been   in    great   confusion ;    or   a 
division  of  your  bookcase  where  the  books  might  be  bet- 
ter arranged.     See  to  these  things  forthwith  :  the  out-of- 
door  matters  are  the  best.     Get  your  man-servant  —  all 
your  people,  if  you  have  half-a-dozen  —  and  go  forth  and 
see  things  made  tidy :   and  see  that  they  are  done  thor- 
oughly ;  work  half  done  will  not  serve  for  our  present 
purpose.     Let  every  nettle  be  cut  down  and   carried  off 
from  the  neglected  corner ;  then  let  the  ground  be  dug 
up  and  levelled,  and  sown  with  grass  seed.     If  it  rains, 
so  much  the  better :  it  will  make  the  seed  take  root  at 
once.     Let  the  wall  or  fence  be  made  better  than  when 
it  was  new ;  let  a  wheelbarrow-full  of  fresh  green   turf 
be  brought ;  let  it  be  laid  down  in   place  of  the  decayed 
edging ;  let  it  be  cut  accurately  as  a  watch's  machinery  ; 
let  the  gravel  beside  it  be  raked  and  rolled  :  then  put 
your  hands  in  your  pockets  and  survey  the  effect  with 
delight.     All  this  will  occupy  you,  interest    you,    dirty 
you,  for  a  couple  of  hours,  and  you  will  come  in  again  to 
your  library  fireside   quite  hopeful  and  cheerful.     The 
worry  and  depression  will  be  entirely  gone  ;  you  will  see 
your  course  beatitifully  :  you  have  sacrificed  to  the  good 
genius  of  Tidiness,  and  you  are  rewarded  accordingly.     I 
am  simply  stating  phenomena,  my  reader.     I  don't  pre- 
tend to  explain  causes  ;  but  I  hesitate  not  to  assert,  that 
to  put  things  right,  and   to    know  that   things   are    put 
right,  has  a  wonderful  effect  in   enlivening  and  cheering. 
You  cannot  tell  why  it  is  so  ;  but  you  come  in  a  very  differ- 
ent man  from  what  you  were  when  you  went  out.     You 
see  things  in  (mite  another  way.     You  wonder  how  you 
could   have    plagued   yourself    so   much   before.      We 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  181 

all  know  that  powerful  effects  are  often  produced  upon 
our  minds   by  causes  which  have  no  logical  connexion 
with  these  effects.     Change  of  scene  helps  people  to  get 
over  losses  and  disappointments,  though  not  by  any  pro- 
cess   of  logic.     If    the  fact  that    Anna   Maria    cruelly 
jilted  you,  thus    consigning  you    to   your    present   state 
of  single   misery,  was  good  reason  why  you  should  be 
snappish  and  sulky  in   Portland-place,  is  it  not  just  as 
good  reason  now,  when,  in  the  midst  of  a  tag-rag  proces- 
sion you  are  walking  into  Chamouni  after  having  climbed 
Mont  Blanc?     The  state  of  the  facts  remains  precisely 
as  before.     Anna  Maria  is   married  to  Mr.  Dunderhead, 
the  retired  ironmonger  with  ten  thousand  a  year.     Nor 
have  any  new  arguments  been  suggested  to  you  beyond 
those  which   Smith  good-naturedly  addressed  to  you  in 
Lincoln's  Inn-square,  when  you  threatened  to  punch  his 
head.     But  you   have  been  up  Mont  Blanc;  you  have 
nearly    fallen    into    a   crevasse ;    your  eyes    are   almost 
burnt  out  of  your  head.     You  have  looked  over  that  sea 
of  mountains  which  no  one  that  has  seen  will  ever  forget : 
here  is  your  alpen-stock,  and  you    shall  carry  it  home 
with  you  as  an  ancient  palmer  his  faded  branch  from  the 
Holy  Land.     And  though  all  this  has  nothing  earthly  to 
do  with  your  disappointment,  you  feel  that  somehow  all 
this  has  tided  you  over  it.     You  are  quite  content.     You 
don't   grudge    Anna   Maria   her  ferruginous   happiness. 
You  are  extremely  satisfied  that  things  have  turned  out 
as  they  did.     The  sale  of  nails,  pots,  and  gridirons  is  a 
legitimate  and  honourable  branch  of  commercial  enter- 
prise.    And  Mr.  Dunderhead,  with  all  that  money,  must 
be  a  worthy  and  able  man. 

I  am  writing,  I  need  hardly  say,  for  ordinary  people 


182  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

when  I  suggest  Tidiness  as  a  constant  source  of  temper- 
ate satisfaction.  Of  course  great  and  heroic  men  are 
above  so  prosaic  a  means  of  content.  Such  amiable 
characters  as  Roderick  Dhu,  in  the  Lady  of  the  Lake, 
as  Byron's  Giaour  and  Lara,  not  to  name  Childe  Har- 
old, as  the  heroes  of  Locksley  Hall  and  Maud,  and  Mr. 
Bailey's  Festus,  would  no  doubt  receive  my  humble 
suggestions  very  much  as  Mynheer  Van  Dunk,  who 
disposed  of  his  two  quarts  of  brandy  daily,  might  be  sup- 
posed to  receive  the  advice  to  substitute  for  his  favourite 
liquor  an  equal  quantity  of  skimmed  milk.  And  pos- 
sibly Mr.  Disraeli  would  not  be  content  out  of  office, 
however  orderly  and  tidy  everything  about  his  estate 
and  his  mansion  might  be.  Yet  it  is  upon  record  that  a 
certain  ancient  emperor,  who  bad  ruled  the  greatest 
empire  this  world  ever  saw,  found  it  a  pleasant  change 
to  lay  the  sceptre  and  the  crown  aside,  and,  descending 
from  the  throne,  to  take  to  cultivating  cabbages.  And 
as  he  looked  at  the  tidy  rows  and  the  bunchy  heads,  he 
declared  that  he  had  changed  his  condition  for  the  bet- 
ter ;  that  tidiness  in  a  cabbage-garden  could  make  a  man 
happier  than  the  imperial  throne  of  the  Roman  Empire. 
It  is  well  that  it  should  be  so,  as  in  this  world  there  are 
many  more  cabbage-gardens  than  imperial  thrones  ;  and 
tidiness  is  attainable  by  many  by  whom  empire  is  not 
attainable. 

A  disposition  towards  energetic  tidiness  is  a  perennial 
source  of  quiet  satisfaction.  It  always  provides  us  with 
something  to  think  of  and  to  do :  it  affords  scope  for  a 
little  ingenuity  and  contrivance :  it  carries  us  out  of 
ourselves :  and  prevents  our  leading  an  unheathily  sub- 
jective life.  It  gratifies  the  instinctive  love  of  seeing 
things  right  which  is  in  the  healthy  human  being.    And  it 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  183 

is  founded  upon  the  philosophical  fact,  that  there  is  a 
peculiar  satisfaction  in  having  a  thing,  great  or  small, 
which  was  wrong,  put  right.  You  have  greater  pleasui-e 
in  such  a  thing,  when  it  has  been  fairly  set  to  rights, 
than  if  it  never  had  been  wrong.  Had  Brummell  been 
a  philosopher  instead  of  a  conceited  and  ernpty-pated 
coxcomb,  I  should  at  once  have  understood,  when  he 
talked  of  '  his  favourite  leg,'  that  he  meant  a  leg  which 
had  been  fractured,  and  then  restored  as  good  as  ever. 
Is  it  a  suggestion  too  grave  for  this  place,  that  this  prin- 
ciple of  the  peculiar  interest  and  pleasure  which  are  felt 
in  an  evil  remedied,  a  spoiled  thing  mended,  a  wrong 
righted,  may  cast  some  light  upon  the  Divine  dealing 
with  this  world  ?  It  is  fallen  indeed,  and  evil :  but  it 
will  be  set  right.  And  then,  perhaps,  it  may  seem  better 
to  its  Almighty  Maker  than  even  on  the  First  Day  of 
Rest.  And  the  human  being  who  systematically  keeps 
right,  and  sets  right,  all  things,  even  the  smallest,  within 
his  own  little  dominion,  enjoys  a  pleasure  which  has  a 
dignified  foundation  ;  which  is  real,  simple,  innocent,  and 
lasting.  Never  say  that  it  is  merely  the  fidgety  par- 
ticularity of  an  old  bachelor  which  makes  him  impatient 
of  suffering  a  weed  or  a  withered  leaf  on  his  garden 
walk,  a  speck  of  dust  on  his  library  table,  or  a  volume 
turned  upside  down  on  his  shelves.  He  is  testifying, 
perhaps  unconsciously,  to  the  grand,  sublime,  impassable 
difference  between  Right  and  Wrong.  He  is  a  humble 
combatant  on  the  side  of  Right.  He  is  maintaining  a 
little  outpost  of  the  lines  of  that  great  army  which  is 
advancing  with  steady  pace,  conquering  and  to  conquer. 
And  if  the  quiet  satisfaction  he  feels  comes  from  an  un- 
exciting and  simple  source  —  why,  it  is  just  from  such 
sources  that  the  quiet  content  of  daily  life  must  come. 


184  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

We  cannot,  from  the  make  of  our  being,  be  always  or  be 
lono-  in  an  excitement.  Such  things  wear  us  and  them- 
selves  out :  and  they  cannot  last.  The  really  and  sub- 
stantially happy  people  of  this  world  are  always  calm 
and  quiet.  In  feverish  youth,  of  course,  young  people 
get  violently  spoony,  and  are  violently  ambitious.  Then, 
life  is  to  be  all  romance.  They  are  to  live  in  a  world 
over  which  there  spreads  a  light  such  as  never  was  on 
land  or  sea.  They  think  that  Thekla  was  right  when 
she  said,  as  one  meaning  that  life,  for  her,  was  done,  '  I 
have  lived  and  loved  ! '  Mistaken  she  !  The  solid  work  of 
life  was  then  just  beginning.  She  had  just  passed  through 
the  moral  scarlet-fever;  and  the  noblest,  greatest,  and 
happiest  part  of  life  was  to  come.  And  as  for  the  dream 
of  ambition,  that  soon  passes  away.  A  man  learns  to 
work,  not  to  make  himself  a  famous  name,  but  to  pro- 
vide the  wherewithal  to  pay  his  butcher's  and  his  grocer's 
bills.  Still,  who  does  not  look  back  on  that  time  with 
interest !  Was  it  indeed  ourselves,  now  so  sobered, 
grave,  and  matter-of-fact,  whom  we  see  as  we  look  back  ? 

Make  me  feel  the  wild  pulsation  that  I  felt  before  the  strife, 
When  I  heard  my  days  before  me,  and  the  tumult  of  my  life; 

Yearning  for  the  large  excitement  which  the  coming  years  would 

yield, 
Eager-hearted  as  a  boy  when  first  he  leaves  his  father's  field, 

And  at  night  along  the  dusky  highway  near  and  nearer  drawn, 
Sees  in  heaven  the  light  of  London  flaring  like  a  dreary  dawn. 

But  just  what  London  proves  to  the  eager-hearted  boy, 
life  proves  to  the  man.  He  intended  to  be  Lord  Chan- 
cellor :  he  is  glad  by-and-bye  to  get  made  an  Insolvent 
Commissioner.  He  intended  to  be  a  millionaire  :  he  is 
glad,  after  some  toiling  years,  to  be  able  to  pay  his  house- 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  185 

rent  and  make  the  ends  meet.  He  intended  to  startle 
the  quiet  district  of  his  birth,  and  make  his  mother's 
heart  proud  with  the  story  of  his  fame  :  he  learns  to  be 
glad  if  he  does  his  home  no  discredit,  and  can  now  and 
then  send  his  sisters  a  ten-pound  not   :  — 

So  sleeps  the  pride  of  former  days, 

So  glory's  thrill  is  o'er: 
And  hearts  that  once  beat  high  for  praise, 

Now  feel  that  pulse  no  more ! 

But  though  these  excitements  be  gone,  there  still 
remains  to  the  middle-aged  man  the  calm  pleasure  of 
looking  at  the  backs  of  the  well-arranged  volumes  on  his 
book-shelves  ;  of  seeing  that  his  gravel-walks  are  nicely 
raked,  and  his  grass-plots  smoothly  mown  ;  of  having  his 
carriage,  his  horses,  and  his  harness  in  scrupulous  order ; 
the  harness  with  the  silver  so  very  bright  and  the  leather 
so  extremely  black,  and  the  horses  with  their  coats  so 
shiny,  their  ribs  so  invisible,  and  all  their  corners  soA 
round.  Now,  my  reader,  all  these  little  things  will  ap- 
pear little  only  to  very  unthinking  people.-*  From  such 
little  things  comes  the  quiet  content  of  commonplace  mid- 
dle life,  of  matter-of-fact  old  age.  I  never  admired  or 
liked  anything  about  Lord  Melbourne  so  much  as  that 
which  I  shall  now  tell  you  in  much  better  words  than  my 
own  :  — 

He  went  one  night  to  a  minor  theatre,  in  company  with  two  ladies 
and  a  fashionable  young  fellow  about  town  —  a  sort  of  man  not  easy 
to  be  pleased. 

The  performance  was  dull  and  trashy  enough,  I  daresay.  The  next 
day  Lord  Melbourne  called  upon  the  ladies.  The  fashionable  young 
gentleman  had  been  there  before  his  lordship,  and  had  been  complain- 
ing of  the  dreadfully  dull  evening  they  had  all  passed.  The  ladies 
mentioned  this  to  Lord  Melbourne.  '  Not  pleased !  Not  pleased ! 
Confound  the  man!     Didn't  he  see  the  fishmongers'  shops,  and  the 


186  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

gas-lights   flashing   from   the   lobsters'   backs,  as   we   drove   along? 
Wasn't  that  happiness  enough  for  him?  ' 

Lord  Melbourne  had  then  ceased  to  be  Prime  Minister,  but  you 
see  he  had  not  ceased  to  take  pleasure  in  any  little  thing  that  could 
give  it.* 

Now,  is  not  all  this  an  admirable  illustration  of  my 
great  principle,  that  the  tranquil  enjoyment  of  life  comes 
to  be  drawn  a  good  deal  from  external  sources,  and  a 
great  deal  more  from  very  little  things  ?  An  ex-Prime 
Minister  thought  that  the  sight  of  lobsters'  backs  shining 
in  the  gas-light,  was  quite  enough  to  make  a  reasonable 
man  content  for  one  evening.  But  give  me,  say  I,  not 
the  fleeting  joy  of  the  lobsters'  backs,  any  more  than 
Sydney  Smith's  sugar-plums,  lazy  satisfactions  partaken 
in  passiveness.  Give  me  the  perennial,  calm,  active,  stim- 
ulating moral  and  intellectual  content  which  comes  of 
living  amid  hundreds  of  objects  and  events  which  are  all 
scrupulously  Right  ;  and  thus,  let  us  all  (as  Words- 
worth would  no  doubt  have  written  had  I  pressed  the 
matter  upon  him) 

feed  this  mind  of  ours, 
In  a  wise  Tidiness  ! 

I  have  long  wished  to  write  an  essay  on  Tidiness  ;  for 
it  appears  to  me  that  the  absence  of  this  simple  and 
humble  quality  is  the  cause  of  a  considerable  part  of  all 
the  evil  and  suffering,  physical  and  moral,  which  exist 
among  ordinary  folk  in  this  world.  Most  of  us,  my  read- 
ers, are  little  people  ;  and  so  it  is  not  surprising  that  our 
earthly  comfort  should  be  at  the  mercy  of  little  things. 
But  even  if  we  were,  as  some  of  us  probably  think  our- 
selves, very  great  and  eminent  people,  not  the  less  would 
our  content  be  liable  to  be  disturbed  by  very  small  mat- 

*  '  Friends  in  Council  Abroad.'  Frasei-'s  Magazine,  vol.  liii.  p.  2. 
(January,  1856.) 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  187 

ters.  A  few  gritty  grains  of  sand  finding  their  way  amid 
the  polished  shafts  and  axles  of  some  great  piece  of  ma- 
chinery, will  suffice  to  send  a  jar  through  it  all  ;  and  a 
single  drop  of  a  corroding  acid  falling  ceaselessly  upon  a 
bright  surface  will  speedily  ruin  its  brightness.  And  in 
the  life  of  many  men  and  women,  the  presence  of  that 
physical  and  mental  confusion  and  discomfort  which 
result  from  the  absence  of  tidiness,  is  just  that  dropping 
acid,  those  gritty  particles.  I  do  not  know  why  it  is 
that  by  the  constitution  of  this  universe,  evil  has  so  much 
more  power  than  good  to  produce  its  effect  and  to  propa- 
gate its  nature.  One  drop  of  foul  will  pollute  a  whole 
cup  of  fair  water ;  but  one  drop  of  fair  water  has  no 
power  to  appreciably  improve  a  cup  of  foul.  Sharp 
pain,  present  in  a  tooth  or  a  toe,  will  make  the  whole 
man  miserable,  though  all  the  rest  of  his  body  be  easy  ; 
but  if  all  the  rest  of  the  body  be  suffering,  an  easy  toe  or 
tooth  will  cause  no  perceptible  alleviation.  And  so  a 
man  with  an  easy  income,  with  a  pretty  house  in  a 
pleasant  neighbourhood,  with  a  good-tempered  wife  and 
healthy  children,  may  quite  well  have  some  little  drop  of 
bitterness  day  by  day  infused  into  his  cup,  which  will 
take  away  the  relish  of  it  all.  And  this  bitter  drop,  I 
believe,  in  the  lot  of  many  men,  is  the  constant  existence 
of  a  domestic  muddle.  . 

And  yet,  practically  important  as  I  believe  the  subject 
to  be,  still  one  rather  shrinks  from  the  formal  discussion 
of  it.  It  is  not  a  dignified  matter  to  write  about.  The 
name  is  naturally  suggestive  of  a  sour  old  maid,  a  precise 
old  bacheldor,  a  vinegar-faced  schoolmistress,  or  at  best 
a  plump  and  bustling  house-maid.  To  some  minds  the 
name  is  redolent  of  worry,  fault-finding,  and  bother. 
Every  one  can  see  that  it  is  a  fine  thing  to  discuss  the 


188  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

laws  and  order  of  great  things,  —  such  as  comets,  plan- 
ets, empires,  and  great  cities  ;  things,  in  short,  with  which 
we  have  very  little  to  do.  And  why  should  law  and  or- 
der appear  contemptible  just  where  they  touch  ourselves? 
Is  it  as  the  ocean,  clear  and  clean  in  its  distant  depths, 
grows  foul  and  turbid  just  where  it  touches  the  shore  ? 
That  which  we  call  law  and  order  when  affecting  things 
far  away,  becomes  tidiness  where  it  reaches  us.  Yet  it 
is  not  a  dignified  topic  for  an  essay. 

This  is  a  beautiful  morning.  It  is  the  morning  of  one  of 
the  last  days  of  September,  but  the  trees,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  some  of  the  sycamores  and  limes,  are  as  green 
and  thick-leaved  as  ever.  The  dew  lies  thick  upon  the 
grass,  and  the  bright  morning  sun  turns  it  to  glancing 
gems.  The  threads  of  gossamer  among  the  evergreen 
leaves  look  like  necklaces  for  Titania.  The  crisp  air, 
just  touched  with  frostiness,  is  exhilarating.  The  dahlias 
and  hollyhocks  are  bright,  but  the  frost  will  soon  make 
an  end  of  the  former.  The  swept  harvest-fields  look 
trim,  and  the  outline  of  the  distant  hills  shows  sharp 
against  the  blue  sky.  Taking  advantage  of  the  moisture 
on  the  grass,  the  gardener  is  busy  mowing  it.  Curious, 
that  though  it  sets  people's  teeth  on  edge  to  listen  to  the 
sharpening  of  edge-tools  in  general,  yet  there  is  some- 
thing that  is  extremely  pleasing  in  the  whetting  of  a 
scythe.  It  had  better  be  a  little  way  off.  But  it  is 
suggestive  of  fresh,  pleasant  things ;  of  dewy  grass  and 
bracing  morning  air  ;  of  clumps  of  trees  standing  still  in 
the  early  mistiness  ;  of  '  milkmaids  singing  blythe.'  Let 
us  thank  Milton  for  the  last  association :  we  did  not  get 
it  from  daily  life.  I  never  heard  a  milkmaid  singing  ;  in 
this  part  of  the  country  I  don't  think  they  do  sing ;  and 
I  believe  cows  are  invariably  milked  within  doors.     But 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  189 

now,  how  pleasant  the  trim  look  of  that  newly-mown  lawn, 
so  carefully  swept  and  rolled  ;  there  is  not  a  dandelion  in 
it  at  all,  —  no  weed  whatsoever.  There  are  indeed  abun- 
dant daisies,  for  though  I  am  assured  that  daisies  in  a  lawn 
are  weeds,  I  never  shall  recognise  them  as  such.  To  me 
they  shall  always  be  flowers,  and  welcome  everywhere. 
Look  too,  at  the  well-defined  outline  of  the  grass  against 
the  gravel.  I  feel  the  joy  of  tidiness,  and  I  gladly  write 
in  its  praise. 

Looking  at  this  grass  and  gravel,  I  think  of  Mr.  Ten- 
nyson. I  remember  a  little  poem  of  his  which  contains 
some  description  of  his  home.  There,  he  tells  us,  the 
sunset  falls 

All  round  a  careless-ordered  garden, 
Close  by  the  ridge  of  a  noble  down. 

I  lament  a  defect  in  that  illustrious  man.  Great  is  my 
reverence  for  the  author  of  Maud  ;  great  for  the  author 
of  Lochsley  Hall  and  the  May  Queen  ;  greatest  of  all 
for  the  author  of  In  Memoriam :  but  is  it  possible  that 
the  Laureate  should  be  able  to  elaborate  his  verses  to 
that  last  and  most  exquisite  perfection,  while  thinking  of 
weedy  walks  outside  his  windows,  of  unpruned  shrubs, 
and  fruit-trees  fallen  from  the  walls  ?  Must  the  thought 
be  admitted  to  the  mind,  that  Mr.  Tennyson  is  not  tidy  ? 
I  know  not.  I  never  saw  his  garden.  Rather  let  me  be- 
lieve that  these  lines  only  show  how  tidy  he  is.  Perhaps 
this  garden  would  appear  in  perfect  order  to  the  visitor ; 
perhaps  it  seems  '  careless-ordered  '  only  to  his  own  sharp 
eye.  Perhaps  he  discerns  a  weed  here  and  there  ;  a 
blank  of  an  inch  length  in  a  boxwood  edging.  Perhaps, 
like  lesser  men,  he  cannot  get  his  servants  to  be  as  tidy 
as  himself.     No  doubt  such  is  the  state  of  matters. 


190  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

There  are,  indeed,  many  degrees  in  the  scale  of  tidi- 
ness. It  is  a  disposition  that  grows  upon  one,  and  some- 
times becomes  almost  a  bondage.  Some  great  musical 
composer  said,  shortly  before  he  died,  that  he  was  only 
then  beginning  to  get  an  insight  into  the  capabilities  of 
his  art ;  and  I  dare  say  a  similar  idea  has  occasionally 
occurred  to  most  persons  endowed  with  a  very  keen 
sense  of  order.  In  matters  external,  tidiness  may  go  to 
the  length  of  what  we  read  of  Broek,  that  Dutch  para- 
dise of  scrubbing-brushes  and  new  paint ;  in  matters 
metaphysical,  it  may  go  the  length  of  what  John  Foster 
tells  us  of  himself,  when  his  fastidious  sense  of  the  exact 
sequence  of  every  shade  of  thought  compelled  him  to 
make  some  thousands  of  corrections  and  improvements 
in  revising  a  dozen  printed  pages  of  his  own  composi- 
tion. Tidiness  is  in  some  measure  a  matter  of  natural 
temperament ;  there  are  human  beings  who  never  could 
by  possibility  sit  down  contentedly,  as  some  can,  in  a 
chamber  where  everything  is  topsy-turvy,  and  who  never 
could  by  possibility  have  their  affairs,  their  accounts, 
their  books  and  papers,  in  that  inextricable  confusion  in 
which  some  people  are  quite  satisfied  to  have  theirs. 
There  may,  indeed,  be  such  a  thing  as  that  a  man  shall 
be  keenly  alive  to  the  presence  or  absence  of  order  in 
his  belongings,  but  at  the  same  time  so  nerveless  and 
washy  that  he  cannot  bestir  himself  and  set  things  to 
rights  ;  but  as  a  general  rule,  the  man  who  enjoys  order 
and  exactness  will  take  care  to  have  them  about  him. 
There  are  people  who  never  go  into  a  room  but  they  see 
at  a  glance  if  any  of  its  appointments  are  awry ;  and 
the  impression  is  precisely  that  which  a  discordant  note 
leaves  on  a  musical  ear.  A  friend  of  mine,  not  an  eccle- 
siastical architect,  never  enters  any  church  without  de- 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  191 

vising  various  alterations  in  it.  The  same  person,  when 
he  enters  his  library  in  the  morning,  cannot  be  easy  un- 
til he  has  surveyed  it  minutely,  and  seen  that  everything 
is  right  to  a  hair's  breadth.  Taught  by  long  experience, 
the  servants  have  done  their  part,  and  all  appears  per- 
fect already  to  the  casual  observer.  Not  so  to  his  eye. 
The  hearth-rug  needs  a  touch  of  the  foot :  the  library- 
table  becomes  a  marvel  of  collocation.  Inkstands,  pen- 
trays,  letter-weighers,  pamphlets,  books,  are  marshalled 
more  accurately  than  Frederick  the  Great's  grenadiers. 
A  chair  out  of  its  place,  a  corner  of  a  crumb-cloth  turned 
up,  and  my  friend  could  no  more  get  on  with  his  task  of 
composition  than  he  could  fly.  I  can  hardly  understand 
how  Dr.  Johnson  was  able  to  write  the  Rambler  and  to 
balance  the  periods  of  his  sonorous  prose  while  his  books 
were  lying  upstairs  dog's-eared,  battered,  covered  with 
dust,  strewed  in  heaps  on  the  floor.  But  T  do  not  wonder 
that  Sydney  Smith  could  go  through  so  much  and  so  va- 
ried work,  and  do  it  all  cheerfully,  when  I  read  how  he 
thought  it  no  unworthy  employment  of  the  intellect 
which  slashed  respectable  humbug  in  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
view, to  arrange  that  wonderful  store-room  in  his  rectory 
at  Foston,  where  every  article  of  domestic  consumption 
was  allotted  its  place  by  the  genial,  clear-headed,  active- 
minded  man :  where  was  the  lemon-bag,  where  was  the 
soap  of  different  prices  (the  cheapest  placed  in  the  wrap- 
ings  marked  with  the  dearest  price)  :  where  were  salt, 
pickles,  hams,  butter,  cheese,  onions,  and  medicines  of 
every  degree,  from  the  '  gentle  jog '  of  ordinary  life  to 
the  fearfully-named  preparations  reserved  for  extremity. 
Of  course  it  was  only  because  the'  kind  reviewer's  wife 
was  a  confirmed  invalid  that  it  became  a  man's  duty  to 
intermeddle    with    such    womanly  household   cares :   let 


192  CONCEENING  TIDINESS. 

masculine  tidiness  find  its  sphere  out  of  doors,  and  femi- 
nine within.  It  is  curious  how  some  men,  of  whom  we 
should  not  have  expected  it,  had  a  strong  tendency  to  a 
certain  orderliness.  Byron,  for  example,  led  a  very 
irregular  life,  morally  speaking  ;  yet  there  was  a  curious 
tidiness  about  it  too.  He  liked  to  spend  certain  hours  of 
the  forenoon  daily  in  writing ;  then,  always  at  the  same 
hour,  his  horses  came  to  the  door ;  he  rode  along  the 
same  road  to  the  same  spot ;  there  he  daily  fired  his  pis- 
tols, turned,  and  rode  home  again.  He  liked  to  fall  into 
a  kind  of  mill-horse  round :  there  was  an  imperfectly  de- 
veloped tidiness  about  the  man.  And  even  Johnson  him- 
self, though  he  used  to  kick  his  books  savagely  about,  and 
had  his  study  floor  littered  with  fragments  of  manuscript, 
showed  hopeful  symptom  of  what  he  might  have  been 
made,  when  he  daily  walked  up  Bolt-court,  carefully 
placing  his  feet  upon  the  self-same  stones,  in  the  self- 
same order. 

Great  men,  to  be  sure,  may  do  what  they  please,  and 
if  they  choose  to  dress  like  beggars  and  to  have  their 
houses  as  frowsy  as  themselves,  why,  we  must  excuse  it 
for  the  sake  of  all  that  we  owe  them.  But  Wesley  was 
philosophically  right  when  he  insisted  on  the  necessity, 
for  ordinary  men,  of  neatness  and  tidiness  in  dress  ;  and 
we  cannot  help  making  a  moral  estimate  of  people  from 
what  we  see  of  their  conformity  to  the  great  law  of 
Tightness  in  little  things.  I  cannot  tolerate  a  harum- 
scarum  fellow  who  never  knows  where  to  find  anything 
he  wants,  whose  boots  and  handkerchiefs  and  gloves  are 
everywhere  but  where  they  are  needed.  And  who  would 
marry  a  slatternly  girl,  whose  dress  is  frayed  at  the 
edges  and  whose  fingers  are  through  her  gloves  ?  The 
Latin  poet  wrote  Nulla  fronti  fides ;  but  I  have  consider- 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  193 

able  faith  in  a  front-door.  If  when  I  go  to  the  house  of 
a  man  of  moderate  means  I  find  the  steps  scrupulously 
clean,  and  the  brass  about  the  door  shining  like  gold ; 
and  if,  when  the  door  is  opened  by  a  perfectly  neat  ser- 
vant (I  don't  suppose  a  footman),  I  find  the  hall  trim  as 
it  should  be,  the  oilcloth  shiny  without  being  slippery, 
the  stair-carpet  laid  straight  as  an  arrow,  the  brass  rods 
which  hold  it  gleaming,  I  cannot  but  think  that  things 
are  going  well  in  that  house  ;  that  it  is  the  home  of 
cheerfulness,  hopefulness,  and  reasonable  prosperity  ;  that 
the  people  in  it  speak  truth  and  hate  whiggery.  Espe- 
cially I  respect  the  mistress  of  that  house  ;  and  conclude 
that  she  is  doing  her  duty  in  that  station  in  life  to  which 
it  has  pleased  God  to  call  her. 

But  if  tidiness  be  thus  important  everywhere,  what 
must  it  be  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  ?  In  these,  so 
far  as  my  experience  has  gone,  tidiness  and  morality  are 
always  in  direct  proportion.  You  can  see  at  once,  when 
you  enter  a  poor  man's  cottage  (always  with  your  hat  off, 
my  friend),  how  his  circumstances  are,  and  generally 
how  his  character  is.  If  the  world  is  going  against  him; 
if  hard  work  and  constant  pinching  will  hardly  get  food 
and  clothing  for  the  children,  you  see  the  fact  in  the 
untidy  house :  the  poor  mistress  of  it  has  no  heart  for 
that  constant  effort  which  is  needful  in  the  cottage  to 
keep  things  right ;  she  has  no  heart  for  the  constant 
stitching  which  is  needful  to  keep  the  poor  little  chil- 
dren's clothes  on  their  backs.  Many  a  time  it  has  made 
my  heart  sore  to  see,  in  the  relaxation  of  wonted  tidi- 
ness, the  first  indication  that  things  are  going  amiss,  that 
hope  is  dying,  that  the  poor  struggling  pair  are  feeling 
that  their  heads  are  getting  under  water  at  last.  Ah, 
there  is  often  a  sad  significance  in  the  hearth  no  longer 
13 


194  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

so  cleanly  swept,  in  the  handle  wanting  from  the  chest  of 
drawers,  in  little  Jamie's  torn  jacket,  which  a  few  stitches 
would  mend,  but  which  I  remember  torn  for  these  ten 
days  past !  And  remember,  my  reader,  that  to  keep  a 
poor  man's  cottage  tidy  his  wife  must  always  have 
spirit  and  heart  to  work.  If  you  choose,  when  you  feel 
unstrung  by  some  depression,  to  sit  all  day  by  the  fire, 
the  house  will  be  kept  tidy  by  the  servants  without  your 
interference.  And  indeed  the  inmates  of  a  house  of  the 
better  sort  are  putting  things  out  of  order  from  morning 
till  night,  and  would  leave  the  house  in  a  sad  mess  if  the 
servants  were  not  constantly  following  in  their  wake  and 
setting  things  to  rights  again.  But  if  the  labourer's 
wife,  anxious  and  weak  and  sick  at  heart  as  she  may 
rise  from  her  poor  bed,  do  not  yet  wash  and  dress  the 
little  children,  they  will  not  be  either  washed  or  dressed 
at  all ;  if  she  do  not  kindle  her  fire,  there  will  be  no  fire 
at  all ;  if  she  do  not  prepare  her  husband's  breakfast,  he 
must  go  out  to  his  hard  work  without  any ;  if  she  do  not 
make  the  beds  and  dust  the  chairs  and  tables  and  wash 
the  linen,  and  do  a  host  of  other  things,  they  will  not  be 
done  at  all.  And  then  in  the  forenoon  Mrs.  Bouncer, 
the  retired  manufacturer's  wife  (Mr.  Bouncer  has  just 
bought  the  estate),  enters  the  cottage  with  an  air  of 
extreme  condescension  and  patronage,  and  if  everything 
about  the  cottage  be  not  in  tidy  order,  Mrs.  Bouncer 
rebukes  the  poor  down-hearted  creature  for  laziness  and 
neglect.  I  should  like  to  choke  Mrs.  Bouncer  for  her 
heartless  insolence.  I  think  some  of  the  hatefullest 
phases  of  human  nature  are  exhibited  in  the  visits  paid 
by  newly  rich  folk  to  the  dwellings  of  the  poor.  You, 
Mis.  Bouncer, and  people  like  you,  have  no  more  right  to 
enter  a  poor  man's  house  and  insult  his  wife  than  that 


CONCEKNING  TIDINESS.  195 

poor  man  has  to  enter  your  drawing-room  and  give  you  a 
piece  of  his  mind  upon  matters  in  general  and  yourself 
in  particular.  "We  hear  much  now-a-days  about  the 
distinctive  characteristics  of  ladies  and  gentlemen,  as 
contrasted  with  those  of  people  who  are  well-dressed  and 
live  in  fine  houses,  but  whom  no  house  and  no  dress  will 
ever  make  gentlemen  and  ladies.  It  seems  to  me  that 
the  very  first  and  finest  characteristic  of  all  who  are 
justly  entitled  to  these  names  of  honour,  is  a  most  delicate, 
scrupulous,  chivalrous  consideration  for  the  feelings  of 
the  poor.  Without  that  the  cottage  visitor  will  do  no 
good  to  the  cottager.  If  you,  my  lady  friend,  who  are 
accustomed  to  visit  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  in  your 
neighbourhood,  convey  by  your  entire  demeanour  the 
impression  that  you  are,  socially  and  intellectually,  com- 
ing a  great  way  down-stairs  in  order  to  make  yourself 
agreeable  and  intelligible  to  the  people  you  find  there, 
you  had  better  have  stayed  at  home.  You  will  irritate,  you 
will  rasp,  you  will  embitter,  you  will  excite  a  disposition 
to  let  fly  at  your  head.  You  may  sometimes  gratify 
your  vanity  and  folly  by  meeting  with  a  servile  and 
crawling  adulation,  but  it  is  a  hypocritical  adulation  that 
grovels  in  your  presence  and  shakes  the  fist  at  you  after 
the  door  has  closed  on  your  retreating  steps.  Don't  fancy 
I  am  exaggerating :  I  describe  nothing  which  I  have  not 
myself  seen  and  known. 

I  like  to  think  of  the  effect  which  tidiness  has  in 
equalizing  the  real  content  of  the  rich  and  poor.  If 
even  you,  my  reader,  find  it  pleasant  to  go  into  the 
humblest  little  dwelling  where  perfect  neatness  reigns, 
think  what  pleasure  the  inmates  (perhaps  the  solitary 
inmate)  of  that  dwelling  must  have  in  daily  maintain- 
ing that  speckless  tidiness,  and  living  in  the  midst  of  it. 


196  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

There  is  to  me  a  perfect  charm  about  a  sanded  floor, 
and  about  deal  furniture  scrubbed  into  the  perfection  of 
cleanliness.     How  nice  the  table   and  the  chairs  look; 
how   inviting  that   solitary  big  arm-chair   by   the   little 
fire  I      The  fireplace  indeed  consists   of  two  blocks  of 
stone  washed  over  with  pipeclay,  and  connected  by  half 
a  dozen  bars  of  iron ;  but  no  register  grate  of  pohshed 
steel  ever  pleased  me  better.     God  has  made  us.  so  that 
there  is  a  racy   enjoyment,  a  delightful    smack,   about 
extreme  simplicity  co-existing  with  extreme  tidiness.     1 
don't  mean  to  say  that  I  should  prefer  that  sanded  floor 
and  those  chairs  of  deal  to  a  Turkey  carpet  and  carved 
oak  or  walnut;  but  I  assert  that  there  is  a  certain  inde- 
finable  relish   about   the   simpler   furniture   which  the 
grander  wants.     In   a  handsome    apartment   you    don't 
think  of  looking  at  the  upholstery  in  detail ;  you  remark 
whether  the  general  effect  be  good  or  bad ;  but  in  the 
little  cottage  you  look  with  separate  enjoyment  on  each 
separate  simple  contrivance.     Do  you  think  that  a  rich 
man,  sitting  in  his  sumptuous  library,  all  oak  and  mo- 
rocco, glittering  backs  of  splendid  volumes,  lounges  and 
sofas  of  every  degree,  which    he  merely  paid  for,  has 
half  the  enjoyment  that  Robinson  Crusoe  had  when  he 
looked  round*  his   cave  with  its  rude  shelves  and  bulk- 
heads, its  clumsy  arm-chair   and   its   rough  pottery,   all 
contrived  and  made  by  his  own  hands  ?     Now  the  poor 
cottager  has  a  good  deal  of  the  Robinson  Crusoe  enjoy- 
ment0; something  of  the   pleasure  which  Sandford  and 
Merton   felt    when    they  had  built   and   thatched   their 
house   and  then  sat  within  it,  gravely  proud  and  happy, 
whilst  the  pelting  shower  came  down  but  could  not  reach 
them.     When  a  man  gets  the  length  of  considering  the 
architectural  character  of  his  house,  the  imposing  effect 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  197 

which  the  great  entrance-hall  will  have  upon  visitors, 
the  vista  of  drawing-room  retiring  within  drawing-room, 
he  loses  the  relish  which  accompanies  the  original  idea 
of  a  house  as  a  something  which  is  to  keep  us  snug  and 
warm  from  wind  and  rain  and  cold.  So  if  you  gain 
something  by  having  a  grand  house,  you  lose  something 
too,  and  something  which  is  the  more  constantly  and 
sensibly  felt  —  you  lose  the  joy  of  simple  tidiness  ;  and 
your  life  grows  so  artificial,  that  many  days  you  never 
think  of  your  dwelling  at  all,  nor  remember  what  it 
looks  like. 

I  have  not  space  to  say  anything  of  the  importance 
of  tidiness  in  the  poor  man's  dwelling  in  a  sanitary  point 
of  view.  Untidiness  there  is  the  direct  cause  of  disease 
and  death.  And  it  is  the  thing,  too,  which  drives  the 
husband  and  father  to  the  ale-house.  All  this  has  been 
so  often  said,  that  it  is  needless  to  repeat  it ;  but  there  is 
another  thing  which  is  not  so  generally  uhderstood,  and 
which  deserves  to  be  mentioned.  Let  me  then  say  to 
all  landed  proprietors,  it  depends  very  much  upon  you 
whether  the  poor  man's  home  shall  be  tidy  or  not.  Give 
a  poor  man  a  decent  cottage,  and  he  has  some  heart  to 
keep  tidiness  about  the  door,  and  his  wife  has  some 
heart  to  maintain  tidiness  within.  Many  of  the  dwell- 
ings which  the  rich  provide  for  the  poor  are  such  that 
the  poor  inmates  must  just  sit  down  in  despair,  feeling 
that  it  is  vain  to  try  to  be  tidy,  either  without  doors  or 
within.  If  the  cottage  floor  is  of  clay,  which  becomes  a 
damp  puddle  in  rainy  weather ;  if  the  roof  be  of  very 
old  thatch,  full  of  insects,  and  open  to  the  apartment 
below  ;  if  you  go  down  one  or  two  steps  below  the 
level  of  the  surrounding  earth  when  you  enter  the 
house  ;    if  there   be  no   proper   chimney,  but  merely  a 


198  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

hole  in  the  roof,  to  which  the  smoke  seems  not  to  find  its 
way  till  it  has  visited  eveiy  other  nook ;  if  swarms  of 
parasitic  vermin  have  established  themselves  beyond 
expulsion  through  fifty  years  of  neglect  and  filth  ;  if  a 
dung-heap  be  by  ancient  usage  established  under  the 
window  ;  *  then  how  can  a  poor  overwrought  man  or 
woman  (and  energy  and  activity  die  out  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  constant  anxiety  and  care)  find  spirit  to  try  to 
tidy  a  place  like  that  ?  They  do  not  know  where  to 
begin  the  hopeless  task-  A  little  encouragement  will  do 
wonders  to  develop  a  spirit  of  tidiness.  The  love  of 
order  and  neatness,  and  the  capacity  of  enjoying  order 
and  neatness,  are  latent  in  all  human  hearts.  A  man 
who  has  lived  for  a  dozen  years  in  a  filthy  hovel,  with- 
out once  making  a  resolute  endeavour  to  amend  it,  will, 
when  you  put  him  down  in  a  neat  pretty  cottage,  astonish 
you  by  the  spirit  of  tidiness  he  will  exhibit,  and  his  wife 
will  astonish  you  as  much.  They  feel  that  now  there  is 
some  use  in  trying.  There  was  none  before.  The 
good  that  is  in  most  of  us  needs  to  be  encouraged  and 
fostered.  In  few  human  beings  is  tidiness,  or  any  other 
virtue,  so  energetic  that  it  will  force  its  way  in  spite  of 
extreme  opposition.  Anything  good  usually  sets  out 
with  timid,  weakly  beginnings  ;  and  it  may  easily  be 
crushed  then.  And  the  love  of  tidiness  is  crushed  in 
many  a  poor  man  and  woman  by  the  kind  of  dwelling  in 
which  they  are  placed  by  their  landlords.  Let  us  thank 
God  that  better  times  are  bejrinnins ;  but  times  are  still 

*  The  writer  describes  nothing  which  he  has  not  seen  a  hundred 
times.  He  lias  seen  a  cottage,  the  approach  to  which  was  a  narrow 
passage,  about  two  feet  in  breadth,  cut  through  a  large  dung-heap, 
which  rose  more  than  a  yard  on  either  side  of  the  narrow  pass 
and  which  was  piled  up  to  a  fathom's  height  against  the  cottage 
wall.     This  was  not  in  Ireland. 


CONCERNING  TIDINESS.  199 

bad  enough.  I  don't  envy  the  man,  commoner  or  peer, 
whom  I  see  in  his  carriage-and-four,  when  I  think  how  a 
score  or  two  families  of  his  fellow-creatures  upon  his 
property  are  living  in  places  where  he  would  not  put  his 
horses  or  his  dogs.  I  am  conservatively  enough  in- 
clined; but  I  sometimes  think  I  could  join  in  a  Chartist 
rising. 

Experience  has  shown  that  healthy,  cheerful,  airy 
cottages  for  the  poor,  in  which  something  like  decency 
is  possible,  entail  no  pecuniary  loss  upon  the  philan- 
thropic proprietor  who  builds  them.  But  even  if  they 
did,  it  is  his  bounden  duty  to  provide  such  dwellings.  If 
he  do  not,  he  is  disloyal  to  his  country,  an  enemy  to  his 
race,  a  traitor  to  the  God  who  entrusted  him  with  so 
much.  And  surely,  in  the  judgment  of  all  whose  opin- 
ion is  worth  a  rush,  it  is  a  finer  thing  to  have  the  cot- 
tages on  a  man's  estate  places  fit  for  human  habitation, — 
with  the  climbing-roses  covering  them,  the  little  gravel- 
walk  to  the  door,  the  little  potato-plot  cultivated  at  after- 
hours,  with  windows  that  can  open  and  doors  that  can  shut ; 
with  little  children  not  pallid  and  lean,  but  plump  and  rosy 
(and  fresh  air  has  as  much  to  do  with  that  as  abundant 
food  has),  —  surely,  I  say,  it  is  better  a  thousand  times  to 
have  one's  estate  dotted  with  scenes  such  as  that,  than  to 
have  a  dozen  more  paintings  on  one's  walls,  or  a  score  of 
additional  horses  in  one's  stables. 

And  now,  having  said  so  much  in  praise  of  tidiness, 
let  me  conclude  by  remarking  that  it  is  possible  to  carry 
even  this  virtue  to  excess.  It  is  foolish  to  keep  houses 
merely  to  be  cleaned,  as  some  Dutch  housewives  are 
said  to  do.  Nor  is  it  fit  to  clip  the  graceful  forms  of 
Nature  into  unnatural  trimness  and  formality,  as  Dutch 


200  CONCERNING  TIDINESS. 

gardeners  do.  Among  ourselves,  however,  I  am  not 
aware  that  there  exists  any  tendency  to  either  error :  so 
it  is  needless  to  argue  against  either.  The  perfection  of 
Dutch  tidiness  is  to  be  found,  I  have  said,  at  Broek,  a 
few  miles  from  Amsterdam.  Here  is  some  account  of  it 
from  Washington  Irving's  ever-pleasing  pen  :  — 

What  renders  Broek  so  perfect  an  Elysium  in  the  eyes  of  all  true 
Hollanders,  is  the  matchless  height  to  which  the  spirit  of  cleanliness 
is  carried  there.  It  amounts  almost  to  a  religion  among  the  inhabi- 
tants, who  pass  the  greater  part  of  their  time  rubbing  and  scrubbing, 
and  painting  and  varnishing:  each  housewife  vies  with  her  neigh- 
bour in  devotion  to  the  scrubbing-brush,  as  zealous  Catholics  do  in 
their  devotion  to  the  Cross. 

I  alighted  outside  the  village,  for  no  horse  or  vehicle  is  permitted 
to  enter  its  precincts,  lest  it  should  cause  defilement  of  the  well- 
scoured  pavements.  Shaking  the  dust  off  my  feet,  then,  I  prepared 
to  enter,  with  due  reverence  and  circumspection,  this  sanctum  sancto- 
rum of  Dutch  cleanliness.  I  entered  by  a  narrow  street,  paved  with 
yellow  bricks,  laid  edgewise,  and  so  clean  that  one  might  eat  from 
them.  Indeed,  they  were  actually  worn  deep,  not  by  the  tread  of 
feet,  but  by  the  friction  of  the  scrubbing-brush. 

The  houses  were  built  of  wood,  and  all  appeared  to  have  been 
freshly  painted,  of  green,  yellow,  and  other  bright  colours.  They 
were  separated  from  each  other  by  gardens  and  orchards,  and  stood 
at  some  little  distance  from  the  street,  with  wide  areas  or  courtyards, 
paved  in  mosaic  with  variegated  stones,  polished  by  frequent  rub- 
bing. The  areas  were  divided  from  the  streets  by  curiously  wrought 
railings  or  balustrades  of  iron,  surmounted  with  brass  and  copper 
balls,  scoured  into  dazzling  effulgence.  The  very  trunks  of  the  trees 
in  front  of  the  houses  were  by  the  same  process  made  to  look  as  if 
they  had  been  varnished.  The  porches,  doors,  and  window-frames  of 
the  houses  were  of  exotic  woods,  curiously  carved,  and  polished  like 
costly  furniture.  The  front  doors  are  never  opened,  except  on  chris- 
tenings, marriages,  and  funerals;  on  all  ordinary  occasions,  visitors 
enter  by  the  back-doors.  In  former  times,  persons  when  admitted 
had  to  put  on  slippers,  but  this  Oriental  ceremony  is  no  longer  in- 
sisted on. 

We  are  assured  by  the  same  authority,  that  such  is 
the  love  of  tidiness  which  prevails  at  Broek,  that  the 


CONCEKNING  TIDINESS.  201 

good  people  there  can  imagine  no  greater  felicity  than  to 
be  ever  surrounded  by  the  very  perfection  of  it.  And  it 
seems  that  the  prediger,  or  preacher  of  the  place,  accom- 
modates his  doctrine  to  the  views  of  his  hearers  ;  and 
in  his  weekly  discourses,  when  he  would  describe  that 
Happy  Place  where,  as  I  trust,  my  readers  and  I  will 
one  day  meet  the  quiet  burghers  of  Broek,  he  strongly 
insists  that  it  is  the  very  tidiest  place  in  the  universe  :  a 
place  where  all  things  (I  trust  he  says  within  as  well  as 
around),  are  spotlessly  pure  and  clean  ;  and  where  all 
disorder,  confusion,  and  dirt  are  done  with  for  ever  ! . 


w&t 


CHAPTER   VII. 
HOW  I  MUSED  IN  THE  RAILWAY  TRAIN  : 

BEING    THOUGHTS    ON    RISING    BY    CANDLELIGHT  ;     ON 
NERVOUS    FEARS  ;    AND    ON    VAPOURING. 

iOT  entirely  awake,  I  am  standing  on  the 
platform  of  a  large  railway  terminus  in  a 
certain  great  city,  at  7.20  a.m.,  on  a  foggy 
-J  morning  early  in  January.  I  am  about  to 
set  out  on  a  journey  of  a  hundred  miles  by  the  7.30  train, 
which  is  a  slow  one,  stopping  at  all  the  stations.  I  am 
alone  ;  for  more  than  human  would  that  friendship  be 
which  would  bring  out  mortal  man  to  see  one  off  at  such 
an  hour  in  winter.  It  is  a  dreamy  sort  of  scene  ;  I  can 
hardly  feel  that  it  substantially  exists.  Who  has  not 
sometimes,  on  a  still  autumn  afternoon,  suddenly  stopped 
on  a  path  winding  through  sere,  motionless  woods,  and 
felt  within  himself,  Now,  I  can  hardly  believe  in  all  this? 
You  talk  of  the  difficulty  of  realizing  the  unseen  and 
spiritual :  is  it  not  sometimes,  in  certain  mental  moods, 
and  in  certain  aspects  of  external  nature,  quite  as  diffi- 
cult to  feel  the  substantial  existence  of  things  which  we 
can  see  and  touch  ?  Extreme  stillness  and  loneliness, 
perhaps,  are  the  usual  conditions  of  this  peculiar  feeling. 
Sometimes  most  men  have  thought  to  themselves  that  it 
would  be  well  for  them  if  they  could  but  have  the  evi- 
dence of  sense  to  assure  them  of  certain  great  realities 


RAILWAY  MUSINGS.  203 

which  while  we  live  in  this  world  we  never  can  touch  or 
see  ;  but  I  think  that  many  readers  will  agree  with  me 
when  I  say,  that  very  often  the  evidence  of  sense  comes 
no  nearer  to  pi'oducing  the  solid  conviction  of  reality  than 
does  that  widely  different  evidence  on  which  we  believe 
the  existence  of  all  that  is  not  material.  You  have  climbed, 
alone,  on  an  autumn  day,  to  the  top  of  a  great  hill ;  a 
river  runs  at  its  base  unheard  ;  a  champaign  country 
spreads  beyond  the  river  ;  cornfields  swept  and  bare  ; 
hedge-rows  dusky  green  against  the  yellow  ground  ;  a 
little  farmhouse  here  and  there,  over  which  the  smoke 
stagnates  in  the  breezeless  air.  It  is  heather  that  you 
are  standing  on.  And  as  you  stand  there  alone,  and  look 
away  over  that  scene,  you  have  felt  as  though  sense,  and 
the  convictions  of  sense,  were  partially  paralysed :  you 
have  been  aware  that  you  could  not  feel  that  the  land- 
scape before  you  was  solid  reality.  I  am  not  talking  to 
blockheads,  who  never  thought  or  felt  anything  particu- 
larly ;  of  course  they  could  not  understand  my  meaning. 
But  as  for  you,  thoughtful  reader,  have  you  not  some- 
times, in  such  a  scene,  thought  to  yourself,  not  without  a 
certain  startled  pleasure,  —  Now,  I  realize  it  no  more 
substantially  that  there  spreads  a  landscape  beyond  that 
river,  than  that  there  spreads  a  country  beyond  the 
grave ! 

There  are  many  curious  moods  of  mind,  of  which  you 
will  find  no  mention  in  books  of  metaphysics.  The 
writers  of  works  of  mental  philosophy  keep  by  the  bread 
and  butter  of  the  world  of  mind.  And  every  one  who 
knows  by  personal  experience  how  great  a  part  of  the 
actual  phases  of  thought  and  feeling  lies  beyond  the 
reach  of  logical  explanation,  and  can  hardly  be  fixed  and 
represented  by  any  words,  will  rejoice  when  he   meets 


204  HOW  I   MUSED  IN 

with  any  account  of  intellectual  moods  which  he  himself 
has  often  known,  but  which  are  not  to  be  classified  or 
explained.  And  people  are  shy  about  talking  of  such 
things.  I  felt  indebted  to  a  friend,  a  man  of  high  talent 
and  cultivation,  whom  I  met  on  the  street  of  a  large  city 
on  a  snowy  winter  day.  The  streets  were  covered  with 
un melted  snow  ;  so  were  the  housetops  ;  how  black  and 
dirty  the  walls  looked,  contrasting  with  the  snow.  Great 
flakes  were  falling  thickly,  and  making  a  curtain  which 
at  a  few  yards'  distance  shut  out  all  objects  more  effect- 
ually than  the  thickest  fog.  '  It  is  a  day,'  said  my  friend, 
'  I  don't  believe  in  ; '  and  then  he  went  away.  And  I 
know  he  would  not  believe  in  the  day,  and  he  would  not 
feel  that  he  was  in  a  world  of  reality,  till  he  had  escaped 
from  the  eerie  <~scene  out  of  doors,  and  sat  down  by  his 
library  fire.  But  has  not  the  mood  found  a  more 
beautiful  description  in  Coleridge's  tragedy  of  Remorse  f 
Opium,  no  doubt,  may  have  increased  such  phases  of 
mind  in  his  case';  but  they  are  well  known  by  numbers 
who  never  tasted  opium  :  — 

On  a  rude  rock, 
A  rock,  methought,  fast  by  a  grove  of  firs, 
Whose  thready  leaves  to  the  low-breathing  gale, 
Made  a  soft  sound  most  like  the  distant  ocean, 
I  staid,  as  though  the  hour  of  death  were  passed, 
And  I  were  sitting  in  the  world  of  spirits  — 
For  all  things  seemed  unreal. 

And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  long  vaulted  vistas 
through  a  pine  wood,  the  motionless  trunks,  dark  and 
ghostly,  and  the  surgy  swell  of  the  wind  through  the 
spines,  are  conditions  very  likely  to  bring  on,  if  you  are 
alone,  this  particular  mental  state. 

But  to  return  to  the  railway  station  which  suggested 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  205 

all  this  ;  it  is  a  dreamy  scene,  and  I  look  at  it  with  sleepy 
eyes.  There  are  not  many  people  going  by  the  train, 
though  it  is  a  long  one.  Daylight  is  an  hour  or  more 
distant  yet ;  and  the  directors,  either  with  the  design  of 
producing  picturesque  lights  and  shadows  in  their  shed, 
or  with  the  design  of  economizing  gas,  have  resorted  to 
the  expedient  of  lighting  only  every  second  lamp. 
There  are  no  lamps,  too,  in  the  carriages  ;  and  the  blank 
abysses  seen  through  the  open  doors  remind  one  of  the 
cells  in  some  feudal  dungeon.  A  little  child  would  as- 
suredly howl  if  it  were  brought  to  this  place  this  morn- 
ing. Away  in  the  gloom,  at  the  end  of  the  train,  the 
sombre  engine  that  is  to  take  us  is  hissing  furiously,  and 
throwing  a  lurid  glare  upon  the  ground  underneath  it. 
Nobody's  wits  have  fully  arrived.  The  clerk  who  gave 
me  my  ticket  was  yawning  tremendously ;  the  porters  on 
the  platform  are  yawning ;  the  guard,  who  is  standing 
two  yards  off,  looking  very  neat  and  trimly  dressed 
through  the  gloom,  is  yawning ;  the  stoker  who  was 
shovelling  coke  into  the  engine  fire  was  yawning  awfully 
as  he  did  so.  We  are  away  through  the  fog,  through 
the  mist,  over  the  black  country  which  is  slowly  turning 
gray  in  the  morning  twilight.  I  have  with  me  various 
newspapers  ;  but  for  an  hour  and  more  it  will  be  impos- 
sible to  see  to  read  them.  Two  fellow-travellers,  whose 
forms  I  dimly  trace,  I  hear  expressing  indignation  that 
the  railway  company  give  no  lamps  in  the  carriages.  I 
lean  back  and  try  to  think. 

It  is  most  depressing  and  miserable  work,  getting  up 
by  candlelight.  It  is  impossible  to  shave  comfortably  ; 
it  is  impossible  to  have  a  satisfactory  bath ;  it  is  impos- 
sible to  find  anything  you  want.  Sleep,  says  Sancho 
Panza,  covers  a  man  all  over  like  a  mantle  of  comfort ; 


r~ 


206  HOW  I  MUSED   IN 

but  rising  before  daylight  envelopes  the  entire  bein°-  in 
petty  misery.  An  indescribable  vacuity  makes  itself  felt 
in  the  epigastric  regions,  and  a  leaden  heaviness  weighs 
upon  heart  and  spirits.  It  must  be  a  considerable  item 
in  the  hard  lot  of  domestic  servants,  to  have  to  get  up 
through  all  the  winter  months  in  the  cold  dark  house : 
let  us  be  thankful  to  them  through  whose  humble  labours 
and  self-denial  we  find  the  cheerful  fire  blazing  in  the 
tidy  breakfast  parlour  when  we  find  our  way  down-stairs. 
That  same  apartment  looked  cheerless  enough  when  the 
housemaid  entered  it  two  hours  ago.  It  is  sad  when  you 
are  lying  in  bed  of  a  morning,  lazily  conscious  of  that 
circling  amplitude  of  comfort,  to  hear  the  chilly  cry  of 
the  poor  sweep  outside ;  or  the  tread  of  the  factory  hands 
shivering  by  in  their  thin  garments  towards  the  great 
cotton  mill,  glaring  spectral  out  of  its  many  windows, 
but  at  least  with  a  cosy  suggestion  of  warmth  and 
light.  Think  of  the  baker,  too,  who  rose  in  the  dark  of 
midnight  that  those  hot  rolls  might  appear  on  your  break- 
fast table ;  and  of  the  printer,  intelligent,  active,  accurate 
to  a  degree  that  you  careless  folk  who  put  no  points  in 
your  letters  have  little  idea  of,  whose  labours  have  given 
you  that  damp  sheet  which  in  a  little  will  feel  so  crisp 
and  firm  after  it  has  been  duly  dried,  and  which  will  tell 
you  all  that  is  going  on  over  all  the  wrorld,  down  to  the 
opera  which  closed  at  twelve,  and  the  Parliamentary  de- 
bate which  was  not  over  till  half-past  four.  It  is  good 
occasionally  to  rise  at  five  on  a  December  morning,  that 
you  may  feel  how  much  you  are  indebted  to  some  who 
do  so  for  your  sake  all  the  winter  through.  No  doubt 
they  get  accustomed  to  it :  but  so  may  you  by  doing  it 
always.  A  great  many  people,  living  easy  lives,  have 
no  idea  of  the  discomfort  of  rising  by  candlelight.     Prob- 


THE   RAILWAY   TRAIN.  207 

ably  they  hardly  ever  did    it:  when   they  did  it,  they 
had  a  blazing  fire  and  abundant  light  to  dress  by ;  and 
even  with    these    advantages,  which  essentially  change 
the  nature  of  the  enterprise,  they  have  not  done  it  for 
very  long.     What  an  aggregate  of  misery  is  the  result  of 
that  inveterate  usage  in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  that 
the  early  lectures  begin  at  7.30  a.m.  from  November  till 
May!     How   utterly  miserable   the    dark,  dirty  streets 
look,  as  the  unhappy  student  splashes  through  mud  and 
smoke  to  the  black  archway  that  admits  to  those  groves 
of  Academe !     And  what  a  blear-eyed,  unwashed,  un- 
shaven, blinking,  ill-natured,  wretched  set  it  is  that  fills 
the  benches  of  the  lecture-room!     The  design  of  the  au- 
thorities in  maintaining  that  early  hour  has  been  much 
misunderstood.     Philosophers  have  taught  that  the  pro- 
fessors, in  bringing  out  their  unhappy  students  at  that 
period,  had  it  in  view  to  turn  to  use  an  hour  of  the  day 
which   otherwise  would  have  been  wasted  in  bed,  and 
thus  set  free  an  hour  at  a  better  season  of  the  day.     An- 
other   school  of  metaphysicians,  among  whom    may  be 
reckoned  the  eminent  authors,  Brown,  Jones,  and  Robin- 
son, have  maintained  with  considerable  force  of  argument 
that  the  authorities  of  the  University,  eager  to  advance 
those  under  their  charge  in  health,  wealth,  and  wisdom, 
have  resorted  to  an  observance  which  has  for  many  ages 
been  regarded  as  conducive  to  that  end.     Others,  again, 
the  most  eminent  among  whom  is  Smith,  have  taken  up 
the  ground  that  the  professors  have  fixed  on  the  early 
hour  for  no  reason  in  particular  ;  but  that,  as  the  classes 
must  meet  at  some  hour  of  each  day,  they  might  just  as 
well  meet  at  that  hour  as  at  any  other.     All  these  theo- 
ries are  erroneous.     There  is  more  in  the  system  than 
meets  the  eye.     It  originated  in  Roman  Catholic  days  ; 


208  HOW   I  MUSED  IN 

and  something  of  the  philosophy  of  the  stoic  and  of  the 
faith  of  the  anchorite  is  involved  in  it.  Grim  lessons 
of  endurance  ;  dark  hints  of  penance  ;  extensive  disgust 
at  matters  in  general,  and  a  disposition  to  punch  the 
head  of  humanity  ;  are  mystically  connected  with  the  lec- 
tures at  7.30  a.m.  in  winter.  It  is  quite  different  in  sum- 
mer, when  everything  is  bright  and  inviting  ;  if  you  are 
up  and  forth  by  five  or  six  o'clock  any  morning  then,  you 
feel  ashamed  as  you  look  at  the  drawn  blinds  and  the 
closed  shutters  of  the  house  in  the  broad  daylight.  There 
is  something  curious  in  the  contrast  between  the  stillness 
and  shut-up  look  of  a  country-house  in  the  early  summer 
morning,  and  the  blaze  of  light,  the  dew  sparkling  life- 
like on  the  grass,  the  birds  singing,  and  all  nature  plainly 
awake  though  man  is  asleep.  You  feel  that  at  7.30  in 
June,  Nature  intends  you  to  be  astir ;  but  believe  it,  ye 
learned  doctors  of  Glasgow  College,  at  7.30  in  Decem- 
ber, her  intention  is  quite  the  reverse.  And  if  you  fly  in 
Nature's  face,  and  persist  in  getting  up  at  unseasonable 
hours,  she  will  take  it  out  of  you  by  making  you  horribly 
uncomfortable. 

There  is,  indeed,  one  fashion  in  which  rising  by  candle- 
light, under  the  most  uncomfortable  circumstances,  may 
turn  to  a  source  of  positive  enjoyment.  And  the  more 
dreary  and  wretched  you  feel,  as  you  wearily  drag  your- 
self out  of  bed  into  the  searching  cold,  the  greater  will 
that  peculiar  enjoyment  be.  Have  you  not,  my  reader, 
learned  by  your  own  experience  that  the  machinery  of 
the  human  mind  and  heart  may  be  worked  backwards, 
just  as  a  steam-engine  is  reversed,  so  that  a  result  may 
be  produced  which  is  exactly  the  opposite  of  the  normal 
one  ?  The  fundamental  principle  on  which  the  working 
of  the  human  constitution,  as  regards  pleasure  and  pain, 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  209 

goes,  may  be  stated  in  the  following  formula,  which  will 
not  appear  a  truism  except  to  those  who  have  not  brains 
to  understand  it  — 

The  more  jolly  you  are,  the  jollier  you  are. 

But  by  reversing  the  poles,  or  by  working  the  machine 
backwards,  many  human  beings,  such  as  Indian  fakirs, 
mediaeval  monks  and  hermits,  Simeon  Stylites,  very  early 
risers,  very  hard  students,  Childe  Harold,  men  who  fall 
in  love  and  then  go  off  to  Australia  without  telling  the 
young  woman,  and  the  like,  bring  themselves  to  this  :  — 
that  their  fundamental  principle,  as  regards  pleasure  and 
pain,  takes  the  following  form  — 

The  more  miserable  you  are,  the  jollier  you 

ARE. 

Don't  you  know  that  all  that  is  true  ?  A  man  may 
bring  himself  to  this  point,  that  it  shall  be  to  him  a  posi- 
tive satisfaction  to  think  how  much  he  is  denying  him- 
self, and  how  much  he  is  taking  out  of  himself.  And  all 
this  satisfaction  may  be  felt  quite  irrespective  of  any 
worthy  end  to  be  attained  by  all  this  pain,  toil,  endurance, 
self-denial.  I  believe  indeed  that  the  taste  for  suffering 
as  a  source  of  enjoyment  is  an  accpjired  taste ;  it  takes 
some  time  to  bring  any  human  being  to  it.  It  is  not  nat- 
ural, in  the  obvious  meaning  of  the  word ;  but  assuredly 
it  is  natural  in  the  sense  that  it  founds  on  something 
which  is  of  the  essence  of  human  nature.  You  must 
penetrate  through  the  upper  stratum  of  the  heart,  so  to 
speak  —  that  stratum  which  finds  enjoyment  in  enjoy- 
ment —  and  then  you  reach  to  a  deeper  sensorium,  one 
whose  sensibility  is  as  keen,  one  whose  sensibility  is 
longer  in  getting  dulled  —  that  sensorium  which  finds  en- 
joyment in  endurance.  Nor  have  many  years  to  pass  over 
us  before  we  come  to  feel  that  this  peculiar  sensibility 

14 


210  HOW  I   MUSED  EST 

has  been  in  some  measure  developed.  If  you,  my  friend, 
are  now  a  man,  it  is  probable  (alas  !  not  certain)  that 
you  were  once  a  boy.  Perhaps  you  were  a  clever  boy ; 
perhaps  you  were  at  the  head  of  your  class ;  perhaps  you 
were  a  hardworking  boy.  And  now  tell  me,  when  on  a 
fine  summer  evening  you  heard  the  shouts  and  merriment 
of  your  companions  in  the  playground,  while  you  were 
toiling  away  with  your  lexicon  and  your  Livy,  or  turning 
a  passage  from  Shakspeare  into  Greek  iambics  (a  hardly- 
acquired  accomplishment,  which  has  proved  so  useful  in 
after  life),  did  you  not  feel  a  certain  satisfaction  —  it  was 
rather  a  sad  one,  but  still  a  satisfaction  —  as  you  thought 
how  pleasant  it  would  be  to  be  out  in  the  beautiful  sunshine, 
and  yet  felt  resolved  that  out  you  would  not  go  !  Well 
for  you  if  your  father  and  mother  set  themselves  stoutly 
against  this  dangerous  feeling ;  well  for  you  if  you  never 
overheard  them  relating  with  pride  to  their  acquaintances 
what  a  laborious,  self-denying,  wonderful  boy  thou  wast ! 
For  the  sad  satisfaction  which  has  been  described  is  the 
self-same  feeling  which  makes  the  poor  Hindoo  swing 
himself  on  a  large  hook  stuck  through  his  skin,  and  the 
fakir  pleased  when  he  finds  that  his  arm,  stretched  out 
for  twenty  years,  cannot  now  be  drawn  back.  It  is  pre- 
cisely the  feeling  which  led  the  saints  of  the  middle  ages 
to  starve  themselves  till  their  palate  grew  insensible  to  the 
taste  of  food,  or  to  flagellate  themselves  as  badly  as  Le- 
gree  did  Uncle  Tom,  or  to  refrain  wholly  from  the  use  of 
soap  and  water  for  forty  years.  It  is  a  most  dangerous 
thing  to  indulge  in,  this  enjoyment  arising  from  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  greatest  jollity  from  the  greatest  suffering  ;  for 
although  we  ought  to  feel  thankful  that  God  has  so  or- 
dered things,  that  in  a  world  where  little  that  is  good  can 
be  done  except  by  painful  exertion  and  resolute  self-de- 


THE   RAILWAY    TRAIN.  211 

nial,  a  certain  satisfaction  is  linked  even  with  that  exer- 
tion and  self-denial  in  themselves,  apart  from  the  good 
results  to  which  they  lead ;  it  seems  to  me  that  we  have 
no  right  to  add  needless  bitterness  to  life  that  our  morbid 
spirit  may  draw  from  it  a  morbid  enjoyment.  No  doubt 
self-denial,  and  struggle  against  our  nature  for  the  right, 
is  a  noble  thing :  but  I  think  that  in  the  present  day 
there  is  a  tendency  unduly  to  exalt  both  work  and  self- 
denial,  as  though  these  things  were  excellent  in  them- 
selves apart  from  any  excellent  ends  which  follow  from 
them.  Work  merely  as  work  is  not  a  good  thing :  it  is  a 
good  thing  because  of  the  excellent  things  that  come  with 
it  and  of  it.  And  so  with  self-denial,  whether  it  appear 
in  swinging  on  a  hook  or  in  rising  at  five  on  a  winter 
morning.  It  is  a  noble  thing  if  it  is  to  do  some  good  ; 
but  very  many  people  appear  to  think  it  a  noble  thing  in 
itself,  though  it  do  no  good  whatever.  The  man  de- 
serves canonization  who  swings  on  a  hook  to  save  his 
country  ;  but  the  man  is  affected  with  a  morbid  reversal 
of  the  constitution  of  human  nature  who  swings  on  a 
hook  because  he  finds  a  strange  satisfaction  in  doing  some- 
thing which  is  terribly  painful  and  abhorrent.  The  true 
nobility  of  labour  and  self-denial  is  reflected  back  on  them 
from  a  noble  end :  there  is  nothing  fine  in  accumulating 
suffering  upon  ourselves  merely  because  we  hate  it,  but 
feel  a  certain  secondary  pleasure  in  resolutely  submitting 
to  what  primarily  we  hate.  There  is  nothing  fine  in  go- 
ing into  a  monastery  merely  because  you  would  much 
rather  stay  out.  There  is  nothing  fine  in  going  off  to 
America,  and  never  asking  a  woman  to  be  your  wife, 
merely  because  you  are  very  fond  of  her,  and  know  that 
all  this  will  be  a  fearful  trial  to  go  through.  You  will  be 
in  truth  ridiculous,  though  you  may  fancy  yourself  sub- 


212  HOW  I  MUSED  IN 

lime,  when    you    are    sitting    at  the    door  of  your  log- 
hut  away  in  backwoods  lonely  as  those  loved  by  Daniel 
Boone,  and  sadly  priding  yourself  on  the  terrible  sacrifice 
you  have  made.     That  sacrifice  would  have  been  grand 
if  it  had  been  your  solemn  duty  to  make  it ;  it  is  silly, 
and  it  is  selfish,  if  it  be  made  for  mere  self-denial's  sake. 
Now  a  great   many   people    do   not    remember   this. 
David  Copperfield  was  pleased  in  thinking  that  he  was 
taking  so  much  out  of  himself.     He  was  pleased  in  think- 
ing so,  even  though  no  earthly  good  came  of  his  doing 
all  that.     His  kind  aunt  was  ruined,  and  he  was  deter- 
mined that  he  would  deny  himself  in  every  way  that  he 
might  not  be  a  burden  upon  her ;  and  so  when  he  was 
walking  to  any  place  he  walked  at  a  furious  pace,  and 
was  glad  to  find  himself  growing  fagged  and  out  of  breath, 
because  surely  it  must  be  a  good  thing  to  feel  so  jaded 
and  miserable.      It  was  self-sacrifice  ;  it  was  self-denial. 
And  if  to  walk  at  five  miles  and  a  half  an  hour  had  had 
any  tendency  to  restore  his  aunt's  little  fortune,  it  could 
not  have  been  praised   too  much ;    and  the  less  David 
liked  it,  the  more  praise  it  would  have  deserved.     And  I 
venture  to  think    that  a  good  deal  of  the  present  talk 
about  muscular  Christianity  is  based  upon  this  error.     I 
do  not  know  that  exertion  of  the  muscles,  as  such,  is 
necessarily  a  good  or  an  essentially  Christian  thing.      It 
is  good  because  it  promotes  health  of  body  and  of  mind ; 
but  you  find  many  books  which  appear  to  teach  that  it  is 
a  line  thing  in  itself  to  leap  a  horse  over  a  five-barred 
gate,  or  to  crumple  up  a  silver  jug,  or  to  thrash  a  prize- 
fighter.     It  is  very  well  to  thrash  the  prize-fighter  if  it 
becomes  necessary,  but  surely  it  would  be  better  to  es- 
cape the  necessity  of  thrashing  the  prize-fighter.    Certain 
of  the  poems  of  Longfellow,  much  admired  and  quoted 


THE   RAILWAY   TRAIN.  213 

by  young  ladies,  are  instinct  with  the  mischievous  notion 
that  self-denial  for  mere  self-denial's  sake  is  a  grand,  he- 
roic, and  religious  thing.  The  Psalm  of  Life  is  ex- 
tremely vague,  and  somewhat  unintelligible.  It  is  philo- 
sophically false  to  say  that 

Not  enjoyment,  and  not  sorrow, 
Is  our  destined  end  or  way. 

For,  rightly  understood,  happiness  not  only  is  our  aim, 
but  is  plainly  intended  to  be  such  by  our  Creator.  He 
made  us  to  be  happy  :  the  whole  bearing  of  revealed 
religion  is  to  make  us  happy.  Of  course,  the  man  who 
grasps  at  selfish  enjoyment  turns  his  back  on  happiness. 
Self-sacrifice  and  exertion,  where  needful,  are  the  way  to 
happiness  ;  and  the  main  thing  which  we  know  of  the 
Christian  Heaven  is,  that  it  is  a  state  of  happiness.  But 
Longfellow,  talking  in  that  fashion  (no  doubt  sitting  in  a 
large  easy  chair  by  a  warm  fire  in  a  snug  study  when  he 
did  so),  wants  to  convey  the  utterly  false  notion,  that 
there  is  something  fine  in  doing  what  is  disagreeable, 
merely  for  the  sake  of  doing  it.  Now,  that  notion  is 
Bhuddism,  but  it  is  not  Christianity.  Christianity  says 
to  us,  Suffer,  labour,  endure  up  to  martyrdom,  when  duty 
calls  you  ;  but  never  fancy  that  there  is  anything  noble 
in  throwing  yourself  in  martyrdom's  way.  '  Thou  shalt 
not  tempt  the  Lord  thy  God.'  And  as  for  Longfellow's 
conception  of  the  fellow  who  went  up  the  Alps,  bellowing 
out  Excelsior,  it  is  nothing  better  than  childish.  Any 
one  whose  mind  is  matured  enough  to  discern  that  Childe 
-Harold  was  a  humbug,  will  see  that  the  lad  was  a  fool. 
What  on  earth  was  he  to  do  when  he  got  to  the  top  of 
the  Alps  ?  The  poet  does  not  even  pretend  to  answer 
that    question.      He  never  pretends  that  the  lad  whose 


214  HOW  I  MUSED  IN 

brow  was  sad,  and  his  eye  like  a  faulchion,  &c,  had  any- 
thing useful  or  excellent  to  accomplish  when  he  reached 
the  mountain-top  at  last.  Longfellow  wishes  us  to  un- 
derstand that  it  was  a  noble  thing  to  push  onward  and 
upward  through  the  snow,  merely  because  it  is  a  very 
difficult  and  dangerous  thing.  He  wishes  us  to  under- 
stand that  it  was  a  noble  thing  to  turn  away  from  warm 
household  fires  to  spectral  glaciers,  and  to  resist  the  invi- 
tations of  the  maiden,  who,  if  the  lad  was  a  stranger  in 
those  parts,  as  seems  to  be  implied,  must  have  been  a 
remarkably  free  and  easy  style  of  young  lady  —  merely 
because  average  human  nature  would  have  liked  ex- 
tremely to  get  out  of  the  storm  to  the  bright  fireside,  and 
to  have  had  a  quiet  chat  with  the  maiden.  I  don't  mean 
to  say  that  about  ten  years  ago  I  did  not  think  that 
Excelsior  was  a  wonderful  poem,  setting  out  a  true  and 
noble  principle.  A  young  person  is  captivated  with  the 
notion  of  self-sacrifice,  with  or  without  a  reason  for  it ; 
but  self-sacrifice,  uncalled  for  and  useless,  is  stark  folly. 
It  was  very  good  of  Curtius  to  jump  into  the  large  hole 
in  the  Forum  ;  no  doubt  he  saved  the  Senate  great  ex- 
pense in  filling  it  up,  though  probably  it  would  have  been 
easier  to  do  so  than  to  carry  the  Liverpool  and  Manches- 
ter Railway  through  Chatmoss.  And  we  cannot  think, 
even  yet,  of  Leonidas  and  his  three  hundred  at  Ther- 
mopylae, without  some  stir  of  heart ;  but  would  not  the 
gallant  Lacedaemonians  have  been  silly  and  not  heroic, 
had  not  their  self-sacrifice  served  a  great  end,  by  gaining 
for  their  countrymen  certain  precious  days  ?  Even  Dick- 
ens, though  not  much  of  a  philosopher,  is  more  philo- 
sophic than  Longfellow.  He  wrote  a  little  book  one 
Christmas  time,  The  Buttle  of  Life,  whose  plot  turns  en- 
tirely upon  an  extraordinary  act  of  self-sacrifice  ;    and 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  215 

which  contains  many  sentences  which  sound  like  the  cant 
of  the  day.     Witness  the  following  :  — 

It  is  a  world  on  which  the  sun  never  rises,  but  it  looks  upon  a 
thousand  bloodless  battles,  that  are  some  set-off  against  the  miseries 
and  wickedness  of  battle-fields. 

There  are  victories  gained  every  day,  in  struggling  hearts,  to  which 
these  fields  of  battle  are  as  nothing. 

But  although  the  book  contains  such  sentences,  which 
seem  to  teach  that  struggle  and  self-conquest  are  noble 
in  themselves,  apart  from  their  aim  or  their  necessity, 
the  lesson  taught  by  the  entire  story  is  the  true  and  just 
one,  that  there  is  no  nobler  thing  than  self-sacrifice  and 
self-conquest,  when  they  are  right,  when  they  are  needful, 
when  a  noble  end  is  to  be  gained  by  them.  As  some 
dramatist  or  other  says  — 

That's  truly  great!     What  think  ye,  'twas  set  up 
The  Greek  and  Roman  names  in  such  a  lustre, 
But  doing  right,  in  stern  despite  of  nature ! 
Shutting  their  ears  'gainst  all  her  little  cries, 
When  great,  august,  and  godlike  virtue  called ! 

The  author,  you  see,  very  justly  remarks  that  you  are 
not  called  to  fly  in  the  face  of  danger,  unless  when  there 
is  good  reason  for  it.  And  therefore,  my  friend,  don't 
get  up  at  seven  o'clock  on  a  winter  morning,  if  you  can 
possibly  help  it.  If  virtue  calls,  it  will  indeed  be  noble 
to  rise  by  candlelight;  but  not  otherwise.  If  you  are  the 
engine-driver  of  an  early  train,  if  you  are  a  factory-hand, 
if  you  are  a  Glasgow  student  of  philosophy,  get  up  at,  an 
unseasonable  period,  and  accept  the  writer's  sympathy 
and  admiration.  Poor  fellow,  you  cannot  help  it !  But 
if  you  are  a  Glasgow  professor,  I  have  no  veneration  for 
that  needless  act  of  self-denial.  You  need  not  get  up  so 
early  unless  you  like.      You  do  the  thing  of  your  free 


216  HOW  I   MUSED   IX 

choice.     And  your  heroism  is  only  that  of  the  Brahmin 
who  swings  on  the  hook,  when  nobody  asks  him  to  do  so. 

Having  mused  in  this  fashion,  I  look  out  of  the  car- 
riage window.  The  morning  is  breaking,  cold  and  dis- 
mal.  There  is  a  thick  white  mist.  "We  are  flying  on, 
across  gray  fields,  by  spectral  houses  and  trees,  showing 
indistinct  through  the  uncertain  light.  It  is  light  enough 
to  read,  by  making  an  effort.  I  draw  from  my  pocket  a 
letter,  which  came  late  last  night :  it  is  from  a  friend,  who 
is  an  eminent  Editor.  I  do  not  choose  to  remember  the 
name  of  the  periodical  which  he  conducts.  I  have  had 
time  to  do  no  more  than  glance  over  it ;  and  I  have  not 
yet  arrived  at  its  full  meaning.  I  feel  as  Tony  Lumpkin 
felt,  who  never  had  the  least  difficulty  in  reading  the  out- 
side of  his  letters,  but  who  found  it  very  hard  work  to  de- 
cipher the  inside.  The  circumstance  was  the  more  annoy- 
ing, lie  justly  observed,  inasmuch  as  the  inside  of  a  letter 
generally  contains  the  cream  of  the  correspondence. 

When  I  receive  a  letter  from  my  friend  the  Editor,  I 
am  able,  by  an  intense  application  of  attention  for  a  few 
minutes,  to  make  out  its  general  drift  and  meaning.  The 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  grasping  the  entire  sense  does 
not  arise  from  any  obscurity  of  style,  but  wholly  from  the 
remarkable  nature  of  the  penmanship.  And  after  gain- 
ing the  general  bearing  of  the  document,  I  am  well  aware 
that  there  are  many  recesses  and  nooks  of  meaning  which 
will  not  be  reached  but  after  repeated  perusals.  What 
appeared  at  first  a  flourish  of  the  pen  may  gradually 
assume  the  form  of  an  important  clause  of  a  sentence, 
materially  modifying  its  force.  What  appears  at  present 
a  blot  may  turn  out  to  be  anything  whatever ;  what  at 
present  looks  like  No  may  prove  to  have  stood  for  Yes. 


THE  RAILWAY  TRAIN.  217 

I  think  sympathetically  of  the  worthy  father  of  Dr. 
Chalmers.  When  he  received  his  weekly  or  fortnightly 
letter  from  his  distinguished  son,  he  carefully  locked  it 
up.  By  the  time  a  little  store  had  accumulated,  his  son 
came  to  pay  him  a  visit ;  and  then  he  broke  all  the  seals, 
and  got  the  writer  of  the  letters  to  read  them.  I  read 
my  letter  over  ;  several  shades  of  thought  break  upon  me, 
of  whose  existence  in  it  I  was  previously  unaware.  That 
handwriting  is  like  In  Memoriam.  Read  it  for  the  twen- 
tieth time,  and  you  will  find  something  new  in  it.  I  fold 
the  letter  up  ;  and  I  begin  to  think  of  a  matter  concern- 
ing which  I  have  thought  a  good  deal  of  late. 

Surely,  I  think  to  myself,  there  is  a  respect  in  which  the 
more  refined  and  cultivated  portion  of  the  human  race  in 
Britain  is  suffering  a  rapid  deterioration,  and  getting  into 
a  morbid  state.  I  mean  in  the  matter  of  nervous  irritabil- 
ity or  excitability.  Surely  people  are  far  more  nervous 
now  than  they  used  to  be  some  generations  back.  The 
mental  cultivation  and  the  mental  wear  which  we  have  to 
go  through,  tends  to  make  that  strange  and  inexplicable 
portion  of  our  physical  constitution  a  very  great  deal  too 
sensitive  for  the  work  and  trial  of  daily  life.  A  few  days 
ago  I  drove  a  friend  who  had  been  paying  us  a  visit 
over  to  our  railway-station.  He  is  a  man  of  fifty,  a 
remarkably  able  and  accomplished  man.  Before  the 
train  started  the  guard  came  round  to  look  at  the  tickets. 
My  friend  could  not  find  his  ;  he  searched  his  pockets 
everywhere,  and  although  the  entire  evil  consequence, 
had  the  ticket  not  turned  up,  could  not  possibly  have 
been  more  than  the  payment  a  second  time  of  four  or 
five  shillings,  he  got  into  a  nervous  tremor  painful  to  see. 
He  shook  from  head  to  foot ;  his  hand  trembled  so  that 
he  could  not  prosecute  his  search  rightly,  and  finally  he 


218  HOW  I  MUSED  IN 

found  the  missing  ticket  in  a  pocket  which  he  had  already 
searched  half  a  dozen  times.  Now  contrast  the  condition 
of  this  highly-civilized  man,  thrown  into  a  painful  flurry 
and  confusion  at  the  demand  of  a  railway  ticket,  with  the 
impassive  coolness  of  a  savage,  who  would  not  move  a 
muscle  if  you  hacked  him  in  pieces.  Is  it  not  a  dear 
price  we  pay  for  our  superior  cultivation,  this  morbid 
sensitiveness  which  makes  us  so  keenly  alive  to  influ- 
ences which  are  painful  and  distressing  ?  I  have  known 
very  highly  educated  people  who  were  positively  trem- 
bling with  anxiety  and  undefined  fear  every  day  before 
the  post  came  in.  Yet  they  had  no  reason  to  anticipate 
bad  news ;  they  could  conjure  up  indeed  a  hundred 
gloomy  forebodings  of  evil,  but  no  one  knew  better  than 
themselves  how  vain  and  weak  were  their  fears-  Surely 
the  knights  of  old  must  have  been  quite  different.  They 
had  great  stalwart  bodies,  and  no  minds  to  speak  of. 
They  had  no  doubt  a  high  sense  of  honour  —  not  a  very 
enlightened  sense  —  but  their  purely  intellectual  nature 
was  hardly  developed  at  all.  They  never  read  anything. 
There  were  not  many  knights  or  squires  like  Fitz  Eu- 
stace, who 

Much  had  pored 
Upon  a  huge  romantic  tome, 
In  the  hall  window  of  his  home, 
Imprinted  at  the  antique  dome 
Of  Caxton  or  De  Worde. 

They  never  speculated  upon  any  abstract  subject :  and 
although  in  their  long  rides  from  place  to  place  they 
might  have  had  time  for  thinking,  I  suppose  their  atten- 
tion was  engrossed  by  the  necessity  of  having  a  sharp 
look-out  around  them  for  the  appearance  of  a  foe.  And 
we  all  know  that  that  kind  of  sharpness  —  the  hunter's 


THE  RAILWAY  TRAIN.  219 

sharpness,  the  guerilla's  sharpness  —  may  coexist  with 
the  densest  stupidity  in  all  matters  beyond  the  little  range 
that  is  familiar.  The  aboriginal  Australian  can  trace 
friend  or  foe  with  the  keenness  almost  of  brute  instinct : 
so  can  the  Red  Indian,  so  can  the  Wild  Bushman  ;  yet 
the  intellectual  and  moral  nature  in  all  these  races  is  not 
very  many  degrees  above  the  elephant  or  the  shepherd's 
dog.  And  stupidity  is  a  great  preservative  against  ner- 
vous excitability  or  anxiety.  A  dull  man  cannot  think 
of  the  thousand  sad  possibilities  which  the  quicker  mind 
sees  are  brooding  over  human  life.  Nor  does  this  friendly 
stupidity  only  dull  the  understanding ;  it  gives  inertia, 
immobility,  to  the  emotional  nature.  Compare  a  pure 
thoroughbred  horse  with  a  huge  heavy  cart-horse  with- 
out a  trace  of  breeding.  The  thoroughbred  is  a  beautiful 
creature  indeed  :  but  look  at  the  startled  eye,  look  at  the 
quick  ears,  look  at  the  blood  coursing  through  those  great 
veins  so  close  to  the  surface,  look  how  tremblingly  alive 
the  creature  is  to  any  sudden  sight  or  sound.  Why, 
there  you  have  got  the  perfection  of  equine  nature, 
but  you  have  paid  for  it  just  the  same  price  that  you 
pay  for  the  perfection  of  human  nature  —  what  a  nervous 
creature  you  have  there  !  Then  look  at  the  cart-horse. 
It  is  clumsy  in  shape,  ungraceful  in  movement,  rough  in 
skin,  dull  of  eye ;  in  short,  it  is  a  great  ugly  brute.  But 
what  a  placid  equanimity  there  is  about  it !  How  com- 
posed, how  immovable  it  looks,  standing  with  its  head 
hanging  down,  and  its  eyes  half-closed.  It  is  a  low  type 
of  its  race  no  doubt,  but  it  enjoys  the  blessing  which  is 
enjoyed  by  the  dull,  stupid,  unrefined  woman  or  man  ;  it 
is  not  nervous.  Let  something  fall  with  a  whack,  it  does 
not  start  as  if  it  had  been  shot.  Throw  a  little  pebble  at 
its  flank,  it  turns  round  tranquilly  to    see  what  is    the 


220  HOW   I  MUSED  IN 

matter.     Why,  the  thoroughbred  would   have   been  over 
that  hedge  at  much  less  provocation. 

The  morbid  nervousness  of  the  present  day  appears  in 
several  ways.  It  brings  a  man  sometimes  to  that  star- 
tled state  that  the  sudden  opening  of  a  door,  the  clash  of 
the  falling  fire-irons,  or  any  little  accident,  puts  him  in  a 
flutter.  How  nervous  the  late  Sir  Robert  Peel  must 
have  been  when,  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  he  went 
to  the  Zoological  Gardens,  and  when  a  monkey  suddenly 
sprang  upon  his  arm,  the  great  and  worthy  man  fainted ! 
Another  phase  of  nervousness  is  when  a  man  is  brought 
to  that  state  that  the  least  noise,  or  cross-occurrence, 
seems  to  jar  through  the  entire  nervous  system  —  to 
upset  him,  as  we  say ;  when  he  cannot  command  his 
mental  powers  except  in  perfect  stillness,  or  in  the  cham- 
ber and  at  the  writing-table  to  which  he  is  accustomed ; 
when,  in  short,  he  gets  fidgety,  easily  worried,  full 
of  whims  and  fancies  which  must  be  indulged  and 
considered,  or  he  is  quite  out  of  sorts.  Another  phase 
of  the  same  morbid  condition  is,  when  a  human  being  is 
always  oppressed  with  vague  undefined  fears  that  things 
are  going  wrong ;  that  his  income  will  not  meet  the 
demands  upon  it,  that  his  child's  lungs  are  affected,  that 
his  mental  powers  are  leaving  him  —  a  state  of  feeling 
which  shades  rapidly  off  into  positive  insanity.  Indeed, 
when  matters  remain  long  in  any  of  the  fashions  which 
have  been  described,  I  suppose  the  natural  termination 
must  be  disease  of  the  heart,  or  a  shock  of  paralysis,  or 
insanity  in  the  form  either  of  mania  or  idiocy.  Numbers 
of  commonplace  people  who  could  feel  very  acutely,  but 
who  could  not  tell  what  they  felt,  have  been  worried  into 
fatal  heart-disease  by  prolonged  anxiety  and  misery. 
Every  one  knows  how  paralysis  laid  its  hand  upon   Sir 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  221 

Walter  Scott,  always  great,  lastly  heroic.  Protract- 
ed anxiety  how  to  make  the  ends  meet,  with  a  large 
family  and  an  uncertain  income,  drove  Southey's  first 
wife  into  the  lunatic  asylum  :  and  there  is  hardly  a  more 
touching  story  than  that  of  her  fears  and  forebodings 
through  nervous  year  after  year.  Not  less  sad  was  the 
end  of  her  overwrought  husband,  in  blank  vacuity  ;  nor 
the  like  end  of  Thomas  Moore.  And  perhaps  the  sad- 
dest instance  of  the  result  of  an  overdriven  nervous 
system,  in  recent  days,  was  the  end  of  that  rugged, 
honest,  wonderful  genius,  Hugh  Miller. 

Is  it  a  reaction,  a  desperate   rally  against  something 
that  is  felt  to  be  a  powerful  invader,  that  makes   it  so 
much  a  point  of  honour  with  Englishmen  at  this  day  to 
retain,  or  appear  to  retain,  a  perfect  immobility  under  all 
circumstances?     It  is  pretty  and  interesting  for  a  lady, 
at  all   events  for  a  young  lady,  to   exhibit  her  nervous 
tremors  ;  a  man  sternly  represses  the  exhibition  of  these. 
Stoic  philosophy  centuries  since,  and  modern  refinement 
in  its   last   polish    of  manner,  alike    recognise  the  Red 
Indian's  principle,  that  there  is  something  manly,  some- 
thing fine,  in  the  repression  of  human  feeling.     Here  is 
a  respect  in  which  the  extreme  of  civilization  and  the 
extreme    of    barbarism    closely   approach   one   another. 
The   Red  Indian  really  did  not  care  for  anything ;  the 
modern  fine  gentleman,  the  youthful  exquisite,  though 
really   pretty  nervous,   wishes   to  convey  by  his    entire 
deportment  the  impression,  that  he  does  not  care  for  any- 
thing.    A   man   is  to   exhibit  no   strong  emotion.     It  is 
unmanly.     If  he  is  glad,   he  must  not  look  it.     If  he 
loses  a  great  deal  more  money  than  he  can  afford  on  the 
Derby,  he   must  take  it   coolly.     Everything  is   to  be 
taken  coolly :  and  some  indurated  folk  no  doubt  are  truly 
as  cool  as  they  look.     Let  me  have  nothing  to  do  with 


222  HOW   I  MUSED  IN 

such.  JVi7  admirari  is  not  a  good  maxim  for  a  man. 
The  coolest  individual  who  occurs  to  me  at  this  moment 
is  Mephistopheles  in  Goethe's  Faust.  He  was  not  a 
pleasant  character.  That  coolness  is  not  human.  It  is 
essentially  Satanic.  But  in  many  people  in  modern  days 
the  apparent  coolness  covers  a  most  painful  nervousness. 
Indeed,  as  a  general  rule,  whenever  any  one  does  any- 
thing which  is  (socially  speaking,)  outrageously  daring, 
it  is  because  he  is  nervous ;  and  struggling  with  the  feel- 
ing, and  striving  to  conceal  the  fact.  A  speaker  who  is 
too  forward,  who  is  jauntily  free  and  easy,  is  certainly 
very  nervous.  And  though  I  have  said  that  perfect 
coolness  in  all  circumstances  is  not  amiable  or  desirable, 
still  one  cannot  look  but  with  interest,  if  not  with  sym- 
pathy, at  Campbell's  fine  description  of  the  Red  Indian  : 

He  said,  — and  strained  unto  his  heart  the  boy: 
Far  differently,  the  mute  Oneyda  took 
His  calumet  of  peace  and  cup  of  joy: 
As  monumental  bronze  unchanged  his  look; 
A  soul  that  pity  touched,  but  never  shook; 
Trained  from  his  tree-rocked  cradle  to  his  bier 
The  fierce  extremes  of  good  and  ill  to  brook 
Impassive, —  fearing  but  the  shame  of  fear, — 
A  Stoic  of  the  woods,  —  a  man  without  a  tear! 

The  writings  of  Mr.  Dickens  furnish  me  with  a  com- 
panion picture  adapted  to  modern  times.  I  confess  that, 
upon  reflection,  I  doubt  whether  a  considerable  portion  of 
the  interest  of  Outalissi's  peculiar  manner  may  not  be 
derived  from  distance  in  time  and  space.  Indian  immo- 
bility and  stoical  philosophy  are  not  sublime  in  the  ser- 
vants' hall  of  modorn  society  :  — 

'I  don't  know  anything,'  said  Britain,  with  a  leaden  eye  and  an 
immovable  visage.  '  I  don't  care  for  anything.  I  don't  make  out 
anything.     I  don't  believe  anything.     And  I  don't  want  anything.'  * 

*  Tiie  Battle  of  Life;   Christmas  Books,  p.  169. 


THE  KAIL  WAY   TRAIX.  223 

Nervous  people  should  live  in  large  towns.  The 
houses  are  so  big  and  afford  such  impervious  shadow, 
that  the  nervous  man,  very  little  when  compared  with 
them,  does  not  feel  himself  pushed  into  painful  promi- 
nence. It  is  a  comfort,  too,  to  see  many  other  people 
going  about.  It  carries  the  nervous  man  out  of  himself. 
It  reminds  him  that  multitudes  more  have  their  cares  as 
well  as  he.  It  dispels  the  uncomfortable  feeling  which 
grows  on  such  people  in  the  country,  that  everybody  is 
thinking  and  talking  of  them,  —  to  see  numbers  of  men 
and  women,  all  quite  occupied  with  their  own  concerns, 
and  evidently  never  thinking  of  them  at  all. 

I  have  known  one  of  these  shrinking  and  evil-forebod- 
ing persons  say,  that  he  could  not  have  lived  in  the  coun- 
try (as  he  did),  had  not  the  district  where  his  home  was 
been  very  thickly  wooded  with  large  trees.  It  was  a 
comfort  to  a  man  who  wished  to  shrink  out  of  sight  and 
get  quietly  by,  when  the  road  along  which  he  was  walking 
wound  into  a  thick  wood.  The  trees  were  so  big  and  so 
old,  and  they  seemed  to  make  a  shelter  from  the  outer 
world.  In  walking  over  a  vast  bare  level  down,  a  man 
is  the  most  conspicuous  figure  in  the  landscape.  There 
is  nothing  taller  than  himself,  and  he  can  be  seen  from 
miles  away.  Now,  to  be  pushed  into  notice  —  to  be  made 
a  conspicuous  figure  — is  intensely  painful  to  the  nervous 
man.  You  and  I,  my  reader,  no  doubt  think  such  a  state 
of  feeling  morbid,  but  it  is  probably  a  state  to  which  cir- 
cumstances might  bring  most  people.  And  we  can  quite 
well  understand  that  when  pressed  by  care,  sorrow,  or 
fear,  there  is  something  friendly  in  the  shade  of  trees  —  in 
anything  that  dims  the  light,  and  hides  from  public  view. 
You  remember  the  poor  fellow  (a  very  silly  fellow  indeed, 
but  very  silly  fellows  can  sutler),  who  asked  Little  Dorrit  to 


224  HOW  I  MUSED  IN 

marry  him,  and  met  a  decided  though  a  kind  refusal. 
He  lived  somewhere  over  in  Southwark,  in  a  street  of 
poor  houses,  which  had  little  back -greens,  but  of  course 
no  trees  in  them.  But  the  poor  fellow  felt  the  instinctive 
longing  of  the  stricken  heart  for  shadow ;  and  so,  when 
his  mother  hung  out  the  clothes  from  the  wash  on  ropes 
crossing  and  re-crossing  the  little  green,  he  used  to  go 
out  and  sit  amid  the  flapping  sheets,  and  say  that  '  he  felt 
it  like  groves  /'  Was  not  that  a  testimony  to  the  friendly 
congeniality  of  trees  to  the  sad  or  timorous  human  being? 
And  when  Cowper  wearied  to  get  away  from  a  turbu- 
lent world  to  some  quiet  retreat,  he  did  not  wish  that 
that  retreat  should  be  in  an  open  country.  No,  he 
says  — 

Ob,  for  a  lodge  in  some  vast  wilderness, 
Some  boundless  contiguity  of  shade, 
Where  rumour  of  oppression  and  deceit, 
Of  unsuccessful  or  successful  war, 
Might  never  reach  me  more  ! 

To  the  same  effect  did  the  same  shrinking  poet  ex- 
press himself  in  lines  equally  familiar  :  — 

I  was  a  stricken  deer  that  left  the  herd 
Long  since:  with  many  an  arrow  deep  infixed 
My  panting  side  was  charged,  when  I  withdrew 
To  seek  a  tranquil  death  in  distant  shades. 

I  suppose  that  if  some  heavy  blow  had  fallen  upon  any 
of  us,  we  should  not  choose  the  open  field  or  the  bare 
hillside  as  the  place  to.  which  we  should  go  to  think 
about  it.  We  should  rather  choose  some  low-lying,  shel- 
tered, shaded  spot.  Great  sorrow  does  not  parade  itself. 
It  wishes  to  get  out  of  sight. 

As  to  the  question  how  this  nervousness  may  be  got 
rid  of,  it  is  difficult  to  know  what  to  think.    It  is  in  great 


THE  RAILWAY  TRAIN.  225 

measure  a  physical  condition,  and  not  under  the  control 
of  the  will.  Some  people  would  treat  it  physically  — 
send  the  nervous  man  to  the  water  cure,  —  put  him  in 
training  like  a  prize-fighter  or  a  pedestrian,  and  the  like. 
These  are  excellent  things  ;  still  I  have  greater  confi- 
dence in  mental  remedies.  Give  the  evil-foreboding  man 
plenty  to  do  ;  push  him  out  of  his  quiet  course  of  life  into 
the  turmoil  which  he  shrinks  away  from,  and  the  turmoil 
will  lose  its  fears.  Work  is  the  healthy  atmosphere  for 
a  human  being.  The  soul  of  man  is  a  machine  with  this 
great  peculiarity  about  it,  —  that  we  cannot  stop  it  from 
motion  when  we  will.  Perhaps  that  is  a  defect.  Many 
a  man,  through  a  weary  sleepless  night,  has  longed  for 
the  power  to  push  some  lever  or  catch  into  the  swift- 
running  engine  that  was  whirring  away  within  him,  and 
bring  it  to  a  stand.  However,  it  cannot  be.  And  as  the 
machine  will  go  on,  we  must  provide  it  with  grist  to 
grind,  we  must  give  it  work  to  do,  or  it  will  knock  itself 
in  pieces  ;  or  if  not  that,  then  get  all  warped  and  twisted, 
so  that  it  never  shall  go  without  creaking,  and  straining, 
and  trembling.  And  so,  if  you  find  a  man  or  woman, 
young  or  old,  vexed  with  ceaseless  fears,  worried  with 
all  kinds  of  odd  ideas,  doubts  upon  religious  matters  and 
the  like,  don't  argue  with  them  ;  that  is  not  the  treatment 
that  is  necessary  in  the  meantime.  There  is  something 
else  to  be  done  first.  It  would  do  no  good  to  blister  a 
horse's  legs  till  the  previous  inflammation  has  gone  down. 
It  will  do  no  good  to  present  the  soundest  views  to  a  ner- 
vous, idle  man.  Set  him  to  hard  work.  Give  him  lots 
to  do.  And  then  that  invisible  machine,  which  has  been 
turning  off  misery  and  delusion,  will  begin  to  turn  off 
content  and  sound  views  of  all  things.  After  two  or 
three  weeks  of  this  healthful  treatment  you  may  proceed 

15 


226  HOW   I   MUSED   IN 

to  argue  with  your  friend.  In  all  likelihood  you  will  find 
that  argument  will  not  be  necessary.  He  has  arrived  at 
truth  and  sense  already.  There  is  a  wonderfully  close 
connexion  between  work  and  sound  views  ;  between  do- 
ing and  knowing.  It  is  in  life  as  it  is  in  religion  :  '  If  any 
man  will  do  His  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine 
whether  it  be  of  God.' 

Looking  out  now,  I  see  it  has  grown  quite  light,  though 
the  day  is  gloomy,  and  will  be  so  to  its  close.  The  train 
is  speeding  round  the  base  of  a  great  hill.  Far  below  us 
a  narrow  little  river  is  dashing  on,  all  in  foam.  Its  sound 
is  faintly  heard  at  this  height.  I  said  to  myself,  by  way 
of  winding  up  my  musing  upon  nervousness :  After  all, 
is  not  this  painful  fact  just  an  over-degree  of  that  which 
makes  us  living  beings  ?  Is  it  not  just  life  too  sensi- 
tively present  in  every  atom  of  even  the  dull  flesh  ? 
There  is  that  gray  rock  which  we  are  passing  ;  how  still 
and  immovable  it  is  !  All  the  stoicism  of  Greece,  all  the 
impassiveness  of  the  mute  Oneyda,  all  the  indifference  of 
the  pococurante  Englishman,  how  far  they  fall  short  of 
that  sublime  stillness  !  But  it  is  still  because  it  is  sense- 
less. It  looks  as  if  it  felt  nothing,  because  it  really  feels 
nothing.  I  compare  it  with  Lord  Derby  before  he  gets 
up  to  make  a  great  speech  ;  fidgeting  on  his  seat ;  watch- 
ing every  movement  and  word  of  the  man  he  is  going  to 
smash  ;  bis  wonderfully  ready  mind  working  with  a  whirr 
like  wheel-work  revolving  unseen  through  its  speed  ;  liv- 
ing intensely,  in  fact,  in  every  fibre  of  his  frame.  Well, 
that  is  the  finer  thing,  after  all.  The  big  cart-horse, 
already  thought  of,  is  something  midway  between  the 
Premier  and  the  granite.  The  stupid  blockhead  is  cooler 
i han  the  Premier,  indeed;  but  he  is  not  so  cool  as  the 
granite.    If  coolness  be  so  fine  a  thing,  of  course  the  per- 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  227 

fection  of  coolness  must  be  the  finest  thing ;  and  that  we 
tind  in  the  lifeless  rock.  What  is  life  but  that  which 
makes  us  more  sensitive  than  the  rock :  what  is  the  high- 
est type  of  life  but  that  which  makes  us  most  sensitive  ? 
It  is  better  to  be  the  warm,  trembling,  foreboding  human 
being,  than  to  be  Ben  Nevis,  knowing  nothing,  feeling 
nothing,  fearing  nothing,  cold  and  lifeless. 

It  is  natural  enough  to  pass  from  thinking  of  one 
human  weakness  to  thinking  of  another ;  and  certain 
remarks  of  a  fellow-traveller,  not  addressed  to  me,  sug- 
gest the  inveterate  tendency  to  vapouring  and  big  talking 
which  dwells  in  many  men  and  women.  "Who  is  there 
who  desires  to  appear  to  his  fellow-creatures  precisely 
what  he  is  ?  I  have  known  such  people  and  admired 
them,  for  they  are  comparatively  few.  Why  does  Mr. 
Smith,  when  some  hundreds  of  miles  from  home,  talk  of 
his  place  in  the  country  ?  In  the  etymological  sense  of 
the  words  it  certainly  is  a  place  in  the  country,  for  it  is  a 
seedy  one-storied  cottage  without  a  tree  near  it,  standing 
bleakly  on  a  hillside.  But  a  place  in  the  country  sug- 
gests to  the  mind  long  avenues,  great  shrubberies,  exten- 
sive greenhouses,  fine  conservatories,  lots  of  horses,  abun- 
dance of  servants  ;  and  that  is  the  picture  which  Mr. 
Smith  desires  to  call  up  before  the  mind's  eye  of  those 
whom  he  addresses.  When  Mr.  Robinson  talks  with 
dignity  about  the  political  discussions  which  take  place 
in  his  Servants'  Hall,  tin;  impression  conveyed  is  that 
Robinson  has  a  vast  establishment  of  domestics.  A 
vision  rises  of  ancient  retainers,  of  a  dignified  house- 
keeper, of  a  bishop-like  butler,  of  Jeamses  without  num- 
ber, of  unstinted  October.  A  man  of  strong  imagination 
ma\-  even  think  of  huntsmen,  falconers,  couriers  —  of  a 


228  HOW   I  MUSED   IN 

grand  baronial  menage,  in  fact.      You  would  not  think 
that  Robinson's  establishment  consists  of  a  cook,  a  house- 
maid, and  a  stable-boy.     Very  well  for  the  fellow  too ; 
but  why  will  he  vapour  ?     When  Mr.  Jones  told  me  the 
other  day  that  something  or  other  happened  to  him  when 
he  was  going  out  '  to  the  stables  to  look  at  the  horses,'  I 
naturally  thought,  as  one  fond  of  horseflesh,  that  it  would 
be  a  fine  sight  to  see  Jones's  stables,  as  he  called  them. 
I   thought   of  three    handsome    carriage-horses    sixteen 
hands  high,  a  pair  of  pretty  ponies  for  his  wife  to  drive, 
some  hunters,  beauties  to  look  at  and  tremendous  fellows 
to  go.     The  words  used  might   even  have  justified  the 
supposition  of  two  or  three  racehorses,  and  several  lads 
with  remarkably  long  jackets  walking  about  the  yard.     I 
was  filled  with  fury  when  I  learned  that  Jones's  horses 
consisted  of  a  large  brougham-horse,  broken-winded,  and 
a   spavined  pony.     I   have   known   a   man   who  had  a 
couple  of  moorland  farms  habitually  talk  of  his  estate. 
One  of  the  commonest  and  weakest  ways  of  vapouring  is 
by  introducing  into   your  conversation,  very  familiarly, 
the  names  of  people  of  rank  whom  you  know  nothing 
earthly  about.     '  How  sad  it  is,'  said  Mrs.  Jenkins  to  me 
the  other  day,   '  about  the  duchess  being  so  ill !     Poor 
dear  thing  !    We  are  all  in  such  great  distress  about  her!' 
'We   all'  meant,  of  course,  the  landed  aristocracy  of  the 
district,  of  which  Mrs.  Jenkins  had  lately  become  a  mem- 
ber, Jenkins  having  retired  from  the  hardware  line  and 
bought  a  small  tract  of  quagmire.     Some   time  ago  a 
man  told  me  that  he  had  been  down  to  Oatmealshire  to 
see  his  tenantry.     Of  course   he  was  not  aware  that  I 
knew  that  he  was  the  owner  of  just  one  farm.     '  This  is 
my  parish  Ave  have  entered,'  said  a  youth  of  clerical  ap- 
pearance to  me  in  a  railway  carriage.     In  one  sense  it 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  229 

was ;  but  he  would  not  have  said  so  had  he  been  aware 
that  I  knew  he  was  the  curate,  not  the  rector.  '  How  can 
Brown  and  his  wife  get  on  ? '  a  certain  person  observed  to 
me  ;  '  they  cannot  possibly  live  :  they  will  starve.  Think 
of  people  getting  married  with  not  more  than  eight  or  nine 
hundred  a  year  ! '  How  dignified  the  man  thought  he 
looked  as  he  made  the  remark  !  It  was  a  fine  thing  to 
represent  that  he  could  not  understand  how  human  beings 
could  do  what  he  was  well  aware  was  done  by  multitudes 
of  wiser  people  than  himself.  '  It  is  a  cheap  horse  that 
of  Wiggins's,'  remarked  Mr.  Figgins  ;  '  it  did  not  cost 
more  than  seventy  or  eighty  pounds.'  Poor  silly  Fig- 
gins  fancies  that  all  who  hear  him  will  conclude  that  his 
own  broken-kneed  hack  (bought  for  £25)  cost  at  least 
£150.  Oh,  silly  folk  who  talk  big,  and  then  think  you  are 
adding  to  your  importance,  don't  you  know  that  you  are 
merely  making  fools  of  yourselves  ?  In  nine  cases  out 
of  ten  the  person  to  whom  you  are  relating  your  exag- 
gerated story  knows  what  the  precise  fact  is.  He  is  too 
polite  to  contradict  you  and  to  tell  you  the  truth,  but  rely 
on  it  he  knows  it.  No  one  believes  the  vapouring  story 
told  by  another  man  ;  no,  not  even  the  man  who  fancies 
that  his  own  vapouring  story  is  believed.  Every  one 
who  knows  anything  of  the  world  knows  how,  by  an 
accompanying  process  of  mental  arithmetic,  to  make  the 
deductions  from  the  big  story  told,  which  will  bring  it 
down  to  something  near  the  truth.  Frequently  has  my 
friend  Mr.  Snooks  told  me  of  the  crushing  retort  by 
which  he  shut  up  Jeffrey  upon  a  memorable  occasion.  I 
can  honestly  declare  that  I  never  gave  credence  to  a  syl- 
lable of  what  he  said.  Repeatedly  has  my  friend  Mr. 
Longbow  told  me  of  his  remarkable  adventure  in  the 
Bay  of  Biscay,  when  a  whale  very  nearly  swallowed 


230  HOW  1  MUSED   IN 

him.  Never  once  did  T  fail  to  li4erfwith  every  mark  of 
implicit  belief  to  my  friend's  narrative,  but  do  you  think 
I  believed  it  ?  And  more  than  once  has  Mrs.  O'Calla- 
ghan  assured  me  that  the  hothouses  on  her  fawther's 
esteet  were  three  miles  in  length,  and  that  each  cluster 
of  grapes  grown  on  that  favoured  spot  weighed  above  a 
hundred  weight.  With  profound  respect  I  gave  ear  to 
all  she  said  ;  but,  gentle  daughter  of  Erin,  did  you  think 
I  was  as  soft  as  I  seemed  ?  You  may  just  as  well  tell 
the  truth  at  once,  ye  big  talkers,  for  everybody  will  know 
it,  at  any  rate. 

It  is  a  sad  pity  when  parents,  by  a  long  course  of  big 
talking  and  silly  pretension,  bring  up  their  children  with 
ideas  of  their  own  importance  which  make  them  appear 
ridiculous,  and  which  are  rudely  dissipated  on  their  enter- 
ing into  life.  The  mother  of  poor  Lollipop,  when  he 
went  to  Cambridge,  told  me  that  his  genius  was  such  that 
he  was  sure  to  be  Senior  Wrangler.  And  possibly  he 
might  have  been  if  he  had  not  been  plucked. 

It  is  peculiarly  irritating  to  be  obliged  to  listen  to  a 
vapouring  person  pouring  out  a  string  of  silly  exagger- 
ated stories,  all  tending  to  show  how  great  the  vapouring 
person  is.  Politeness  forbids  your  stating  that  you  don't 
believe  them.  I  have  sometimes  derived  comfort  under 
such  an  infliction  from  making  a  memorandum,  mentally, 
and  then,  like  Captain  Cuttle,  '  making  a  note' on  the 
earliest  opportunity.  By  taking  this  course,  instead  of 
being  irritated  by  each  successive  stretch,  you  are  rather 
gratified  by  the  number  and  the  enormity  of  them.  I 
hereby  give  notice  to  all  ladies  and  gentlemen  whose 
conscience  tells  them  that  they  are  accustomed  to  vapour, 
that  it  is  not  improbable  that  I  have  in  my  possession  a 
written  list  of  remarkable  statements  made  by  them.     It 


THE  RAILWAY   TRAIN.  231 

is  possible  that  they  would  look  rather  blue  if  they  were 
permitted  to  see  it. 

Let  me  add,  that  it  is  not  always  vapouring  to  talk  of 
one's  self,  even  in  terms  which  imply  a  compliment.  It 
was  not  vapouring  when  Lord  Tenterden,  being  Lord 
Chief  Justice  of  England,  standing  by  Canterbury  Cathe- 
dral with  his  son  by  his  side,  pointed  to  a  little  barber's 
shop,  and  said  to  the  boy,  '  I  never  feel  proud  except 
when  I  remember  that  in  that  shop  your  grandfather 
shaved  for  a  penny ! '  It  was  not  vapouring  when 
Burke  wrote,  '  I  was  not  rocked,  and  swaddled,  and 
dandled  into  a  legislator :  Nitor  in  adversum  is  the  motto 
for  a  man  like  me  ! '  It  was  not  vapouring  when  Milton 
wrote  that  he  had  in  himself  a  conviction  that '  by  labour 
and  intent  study,  which  he  took  to  be  his  portion  in  this 
life,  he  might  leave  to  after  ages  something  so  written  as 
that  men  should  not  easily  let  it  die.'  Nor  was  it 
vapouring,  but  a  pleasing  touch  of  nature,  when  the 
King  of  Siam  begged  our  ambassador  to  assure  Queen 
Victoria  that  a  letter  which  he  sent  to  her,  in  the  English 
language,  was  composed  and  written  entirely  by  himself. 
It  is  not  vapouring,  kindly  reader,  when  upon  your 
return  home  after  two  or  three  days'  absence,  your  little 
son,  aged  four  years,  climbs  upon  your  knee,  and  begs 
you  to  ask  his  mother  if  he  has  not  been  a  very  good  boy 
when  you  were  away  ;  nor  when  he  shows  you,  with  great 
pride,  the  medal  which  he  has  won  a  few  yeai-s  later.  It 
is  not  vapouring  when  the  gallant  man  who  hei'oically 
jeoparded  life  and  limb  for  the  women's  and  children's 
sake  at  Lucknow,  wears  the  Victoria  Cross  over  his 
brave  heart.  Nor  is  it  a  piece  of  national  vapouring, 
though  it  is,  sure  enough,  an  appeal  to  proud  remem- 
brances, when  England  preserves  religiously  the   stout 


232  RAILWAY  MUSINGS. 

old  Victory,  and  points  strangers  to  the  spot  where  Nel- 
son fell  and  died. 

But  a  shrieking  whistle  yells  in  my  ear :  my  musings 
are  suddenly  pulled  up.  The  hundred  miles  are  trav- 
ersed :  the  train  is  slackening  its  speed.  It  was  half- 
past  seven  when  we  started :  it  is  now  about  half-past 
eleven.  We  draw  alongside  the  platform :  there  are 
faces  I  know.  I  see  a  black  head  over  the  palisade  : 
that  is  my  horse.  It  would  be  vapouring  to  say  that  my 
carriage  awaits  me  ;  for  though  it  has  four  wheels,  it  is 
drawn  by  no  more  than  four  legs.  Drag  out  a  portman- 
teau from  under  the  seat,  exchange  a  cap  for  a  hat,  open 
the  door,  jump  out,  bundle  away  home.  And  then,  per- 
haps, I  may  tell  some  unknown  friends  who  have  the 
patience  to  read  my  essays,  How  I  mused  in  the  railway 
train. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

CONCERNING  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES    OF 
THE  DWELLING. 


'HEN  the  great  Emperor  Napoleon  was 
packed  off  to  Elba,  he  had,  as  was  usual 
with  him,  a  sharp  eye  to  theatrical  effect. 
Indeed  that  distinguished  man,  during  the 
period  of  his  great  elevation  as  well  as  of  his  great  down- 
fall, was  subject,  in  a  degree  almost  unexampled,  to  the 
tyranny  of  a  principle  which  in  the  case  of  commonplace 
people  finds  expression  in  the  representative  inquiry, 
'  What  will  Mrs.  Grundy  say  ?  '  Whenever  Napoleon 
was  about  to  do  anything  particular,  or  was  actually 
doing  anything  particular,  he  was  always  thinking  to 
himself,  '  What  will  Mrs.  Grundy  say  ?  '  Of  course  his 
Mrs.  Grundy  was  a  much  bigger  and  much  more  impor- 
tant individual  than  your  Mrs.  Grundy,  my  reader. 
Your  Mrs.  Grundy  is  the  ill-natured,  tattling  old  tabby 
who  lives  round  the  corner,  and  whose  window  you  feel 
as  much  afraid  to  pass  as  if  it  were  a  battery  command- 
ing the  pavement,  and  as  if  the  ugly  old  woman's  baleful 
eyes  were  so  many  Lancaster  guns.  Or  perhaps  your 
Mrs.  Grundy  is  the  goodnatured  friend  (as  described  by 
Mr.  Sheridan)  who  is  always  ready  to  tell  you  of  anything 
he   has   heard  to  your  disadvantage,  but  who  would  not 


234  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

for  the  world  repeat  to  you  any  kind  or  pleasant  remark, 
lest  the  vanity  thereby  fostered  should  injuriously  affect 
your  moral  development.  But  Napoleon's  Mrs.  Grundy 
consisted  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  Russia,  Prussia, 
Austria,  Italy,  Spain,  Denmark,  Sweden,  Norway,  Switz- 
erland, the  United  States  ;  in  brief,  to  Napoleon,  Mrs. 
Grundy  meant  Europe,  Asia,  Africa,  and  America.  And 
really,  when  a  man  is  asking  himself  what  the  whole 
civilized  world  will  think  and  say  about  what  he  is 
doing,  and  when  he  feels  quite  sure  that  it  will  think  and 
say  something,  it  is  excusable  if  in  what  he  does  he  has 
an  eye  to  what  Mrs.  Grundy  will  think  and  say. 

Accordingly,  when  the  great  Emperor  was  forced  to 
exchange  the  imperial  throne  of  France  for  the  sover- 
eignty of  that  little  speck  in  the  Mediterranean,  his  first 
and  most  engrossing  reflection  on  his  journey  to  Elba 
was,  what  will  Mrs.  Grundy  say  ?  And  many  thoughts 
not  very  pleasant  to  an  ambitious  man  of  unphilosophical 
temperament,  would  be  suggested  by  the  question.  He 
would  naturally  think,  Mrs.  Grundy  will  be  chuckling 
over  my  downfall.  Mrs.  Grundy  will  be  saying  that  I, 
and  all  my  aspirations  and  hopes,  have  been  fearfully 
smashed.  Mrs.  Grundy  will  be  saying,  that  it  serves  me 
right  for  my  impudence.  Mrs.  Grundy  will  be  saying 
(kindly)  that  it  will  do  me  a  great  deal  of  good.  Ami- 
able and  benevolent  old  lady  !  Mrs.  Grundy  will  be 
saying  that  I  am  now  going  away  to  my  exile  in  very  low 
spirits,  feeling  very  bitter,  very  much  disappointed,  very 
thoroughly  humbled,  —  going  away  (only  Napoleon  had 
not  read  Swift)  in  the  extremity  of  impotent  fury  to 
'  die  in  a  rage,  like  a  poisoned  rat  in  a  hole.'  Mrs. 
Grundy  will  be  saying  that  when  I  get  to  Elba  finally,  I 
shall  lead  a  poor  life  there  ;  kicking  about  the  dogs  and 


OF   THE   DWELLING.  235 

cats,  swearing  at  the  servants,  whacking  the  horses 
viciously,  perhaps  even  throwing  plates  at  the  attendants' 
heads.  Such,  the  Emperor  would  think,  will  be  the  say- 
ings of  Mrs.  Grundy.  And  the  Emperor,  not  a  man  of 
resigned  or  philosophical  temper,  would  know  that  in  all 
this  Mrs.  Grundy  would  be  nearly  right.  But  at  all 
events,  says  Napoleon  to  himself,  she  shall  not  have  the 
satisfaction  of  thinking  that  she  is  so.  I  shall  mortify 
Mrs.  Grundy  by  making  her  think  that  I  am  perfectly 
jolly.  I  shall  get  her  to  believe  that  all  this  humiliation 
which  she  has  heaped  upon  me  is  impotent  to  touch  me 
where  I  can  really  feel.  She  shall  think  that  she  has 
not  found  the  raw.  And  so,  when  Napoleon  settled  at- 
Elba  —  stamped  upon  his  coin,  engraven  upon  his  silver 
plate,  emblazoned  on  his  carriage  panels,  written  upon 
his  very  china  and  crockery,  —  there  blazed  forth  in  Mrs. 
Grundy's  view  the  defiant  words,  Ubicunque  felix  ! 

Now,  had  Mrs.  Grundy  had  much  philosophic  insight 
into  human  conduct  and  motives,  she  would  have  known 
that  her  purpose  of  humiliation  and  embitterment  was  at- 
tained, and  that  all  her  ill-set  sayings  had  proved  right.  It 
was  because  in  Elba  the  great  exile  was  a  bitterly  dis- 
appointed man,  that  he  so  ostentatiously  paraded  before 
the  world  the  assurance  that  he  was  '  happy  anywhere.' 
It  was  because  he  thought  so  much  of  Mrs.  Grundy,  and 
attached  so  much  importance  to  what  she  might  say,  that 
he  hung  out  this  flag  of  defiance.  If  he  had  really  been 
as  happy  and  as  independent  of  outward  circumstances  as 
he  said  he  was,  he  would  not  have  taken  the  trouble  to 
say  so.  Had  Napoleon  said  nothing  about  himself  but 
begun  to  grow  cabbages  and  train  flowers,  and  grow  fat 
and  rosy,  we  should  not  have  needed  the  motto.  But  if 
any  man,  Emperor  or  not,  trumpet  forth  on  the  house- 


236  THE  MOKAL  INFLUENCES 

tops  that  he  is  ubicunque  felix;  and  if  we  find  him  walk- 
ing moodily  by  the  sea-shore,  with  a  knitted  brow  and  ab- 
sent air,  and  a  very  poor  appetite,  why,  my  reader,  the 
answer  to  his  statement  may  be  conveyed,  inarticulately, 
by  a  low  and  prolonged  whistle  ;  or  articulately,  by  an 
advice  to  address  that  statement  to  the  marines. 

If  there  be  a  thing  which  I  detest,  it  is  a  diffuse  and 
rambling  style.  Let  any  writer  always  treat  his  subject 
in  a  manner  terse  and  severely  logical.  My  own  model 
is  Tacitus,  and  the  earlier  writings  of  Bacon.  Let  a  man 
say  in  a  straightforward  way  what  he  has  got  to  say  ;  and 
the  more  briefly  the  better.  And  above  all,  young  writer, 
avoid  that  fashion  which  is  set  by  the  leading  articles  of 
the  Times,  of  beginning  your  observations  upon  a  subject 
with  something  which  to  the  ordinary  mind  appears  to 
have  nothing  earthly  to  do  with  it.  By  carefully  carry- 
ing out  the  advices  here  tendered  to  you,  you  may  ulti- 
mately, after  several  years  of  practice,  attain  to  a  lim- 
ited success  as  an  obscure  third-rate  essayist. 

Napoleon,  then  (to  resume  our  argument  after  this  lit- 
tle excursus),  paraded  before  the  world  the  declaration 
that  it  did  not  matter  to  him  where  he  might  be ;  he 
would  be  '  happy  anywhere.'  What  tremendous  non- 
sense he  talked !  Why,  setting  aside  altogether  such 
great  causes  of  difference  as  an  unhealthy  climate,  stupid 
society  or  no  society  at  all,  usefulness  or  uselessness,  hon- 
our or  degradation, —  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the 
scenery  amid  which  a  man  lives,  and  the  house  in  which 
he  lives,  have  a  vast  deal  to  do  with  making  him  what  he 
is.  The  same  man  (to  use  an  expression  which  is  only 
seemingly  Hibernian)  is  an  entirely  different  man  when 
put  in  a  different  place.  Life  is  in  itself  a  neutral  thing- 
colourless  and  tasteless ;  it  takes  its  colour  and  its  fla- 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  237 

vour  from  the  scenes  amid  which  we  lead  it.  It  is  like 
water,  which  external  influences  may  make  the  dirtiest  or 
cleanest,  the  bitterest  or  sweetest,  of  all  things.  Life,  char- 
acter, feeling,  are  things  very  greatly  dependent  on  exter- 
nal influences.  In  a  larger  sense  than  the  common  saying 
is  usually  understood,  we  are  'the  creatures  of  circum- 
stances.' Only  very  stolid  people  are  not  affected  by  the 
scenes  in  which  they  live.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  an 
appreciable  difference  will  be  produced  on  a  man's  charac- 
ter by  varied  classes  of  scenery  ;  that  is,  that  the  same  man 
will  be  appreciably  different,  morally,  according  as  you 
place  him  for  days  on  a  rocky,  stormy  coast ;  on  a  level 
sandy  shore  ;  inland  in  a  fertile  wooded  country  ;  inland 
among  bleak  wild  hills  ;  among  Scotch  firs  with  their  long 
bare  poles ;  horse-chestnuts  blazing  with  their  June  blos- 
soms ;  or  thick  full  laurels,  and  yews,  and  hollies,  thick  to  the 
ground,  and  shutting  an  external  world  out.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  ordinary  people  will  feel  any  appreciable  varia- 
tion of  the  moral  and  spiritual  atmosphere,  traceable  for 
its  cause  to  such  variety  of  scene.  A  man  must  be  fash- 
ioned of  very  delicate  clay,  he  must  have  a  nervous  sys- 
tem very  sensitive,  morbidly  sensitive  perhaps,  if  such 
things  as  these  very  decidedly  determine  what  he 
shall  be,  morally  and  intellectually,  for  the  time.  Yet 
no  doubt  such  matters  have  upon  many  human  be- 
ings a  real  effect.  If  you  live  in  a  country  house  into 
whose  grounds  you  enter  through  a  battlemented  gateway 
under  a  lofty  arch  ;  if  the  great  leaves  of  the  massive  oak 
and  iron  gate  are  swung  back  to  admit  you,  as  you  pass 
from  the  road  outside  to  the  sequestered  pleasance  within, 
where  the  grass,  the  gravel,  the  evergreens,  the  flowers, 
the  winding  paths,  the  little  pond,  the  noisy  little  brook 
that  passes  beneath  the  rnstic  bridge,  are  all  cut  off  from 


238  THE  MORAL   INFLUENCES 

the  outer  world  by  a  tall  battlemeuted  wall,  too  tall  for 
leaping  or  looking  over,  —  I  think  that,  at  first  at  least, 
you  will  have  a  different  feeling  all  day,  you  will  be  a 
different  man  all  day,  for  that  arched  gateway  and  that 
battlemented  wall.  You  will  not  feel  as  if  you  had  come 
in  by  a  common  five-bar  gate,  painted  green,  hung  from 
freestone  pillars  five  or  six  feet  high,  and  shaded  with 
laurels.  It  is  wonderful  what  an  effect  is  produced 
upon  many  minds  by  even  a  single  external  circum- 
stance such  as  that ;  nor  can  I  admit  that  there  is  any- 
thing morbid  in  the  mind  which  is  affected  by  such  things. 
A  very  little  thing,  a  solitary  outward  fact,  may,  by  the 
influence  of  associations  not  necessarily  personal,  become 
idealized  into  something  whose  flavour  reaches,  like  salt 
in  cookery,  perceptibly  through  all  life.  '  You  may  laugh 
as  you  please,'  says  one  of  the  most  thoughtful  and  de- 
lightful of  English  essayists,  'but  life  seems  somewhat 
insupportable  to  me  without  a  pond  —  a  squarish  pond, 
not  over  clean.'  You  and  I  do  not  know,  my  readers, 
what  early  i*ecollections  may  have  made  such  a  little 
piece  of  water  something  whose  presence  shall  appreci- 
ably affect  the  genial  philosopher's  feeling  day  by  day, 
and  hour  by  hour.  The  savour  of  its  presence  (I  don't 
speak  materially)  may  reach  everywhere.  And  if  there 
be  anything  which  that  writer  is  not,  he  is  not  morbid ; 
and  he  is  not  fanciful  in  the  sense  in  which  a  fanciful  per- 
son means  a  chronicler  of  morbid  impressions.  And  we 
all  remember  the  little  child  in  Wordsworth's  poem,  who 
persisted  in  expressing  a  decided  preference  for  one 
place  in  the  country  above  another  which  appeared  likely 
to  have  greater  attractions ;  and  who,  when  pressed  for 
his  reasons,  did,  after  much  reflection,  fix  upon  a  single 
fact  as  the  cause  of  his  preference  :  — 


OF   THE  DWELLING.  239 

At  Kilve  there  was  no  weathercock; 
And  that's  the  reason  why. 

No  one  can  tell  how  that  weathercock  may  have  ob- 
truded itself  upon  the  little  man's  dreams,  or  how  thor- 
oughly its  presence  may  have  permeated  all  his  life.     I 
know  a  little  child,  three  years  and  a  half  old,  whose  en- 
tire life  for  many  weeks  appeared  embittered  by  the  pres- 
ence of  a  dinner-bell  upon  the  hall-table  of  her  home. 
She  could  not  be  induced  to  go  near  it;  she  trembled 
with  terror  when  she  heard  it  rung :  it  fulfilled  for  her 
the  part  of  Mr.  Thackeray's  famous  skeleton.    And  I  am 
very  sure  that  we  have  all  of  us  dinner-bells  and  weather- 
cocks which  haunt    and  worry  us,  and    squarish  ponds 
which  give  a  savour  to  our  life.     And  for  any  ordinary 
mortal  to  say  that  he  is  ubicunque  felix  is  pure  nonsense. 
Napoleon  found  it  was  nonsense  even  at  Elba ;  and  at  St. 
Helena  he  found  it  yet  more  distinctly.    No  man  can  say 
truly  that  he  is  the  same  wherever  he  goes.     That  sub- 
lime elevation  above  outward  circumstances  is  not  attain- 
able by  beings  all  of  whom  are  half,  and  a  great  many  of 
whom  are  a  good  deal  more  than  half,  material.    We  are 
all  moral  chameleons ;  and  we  take  the  color  of  the  ob- 
jects among  which  we  are  placed. 

Here  am  I  this  morning,  writing  on  busily.  I  am  all 
alone  in  a  quiet  little  study.  The  prevailing  colour 
around  me  is  green  —  the  chairs,  tables,  couches,  book- 
cases, are  all  of  oak,  rich  in  colour,  and  growing  dark 
through  age,  but  green  predominates  :  window-curtains, 
table-covers,  carpet,  rug,  covers  of  chairs  and  couches, 
are  green.  I  look  through  the  window,  which  is  some 
distance  off,  right  before  me.  The  window  is  set  in  a 
frame  of  green  leaves  :  it  looks  out  on  a  quiet  corner  of 
the  garden.    There  is  a  wall  not  far  off  green  with  ivy  and 


240  THE  MORAL   INFLUENCES 

other  climbing  plants  ;  there  is  a  bright  little  bit  of  turf 
like   emerald,   and   a   clump    of  evergreens   varying    in 
shade.     Over  the  wall  I  see  a  round  green  hill,  crowned 
by  oaks   which   autumn    has   not  begun  to   make   sere. 
How  quiet  everything  is !     I  am  in  a  comparatively  re- 
mote part  of  the  house,  and  there  is  no  sound  of  house- 
hold lite ;  no  pattei'ing  of  little  feet ;  no  voices  of  ser- 
vants in  discussion  less  logical  and  calm  than  might  be 
desired.     The  timepiece  above  the  fire-place  ticks  audi- 
bly ;  the  fire  looks  sleepy  ;  and  I  know  that  I  may  sit 
here  all  day  if  I  please,  no  one  interrupting  me.     No 
man   worth  speaking  of  will  spend  his  ordinary  day  in 
idleness ;  but  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  one  may  divide 
one's  time  and  portion  out  one's  day  at  one's  own  will 
and  pleasure.     Such  a  mode  of  life  is  still  possible  in  this 
country:  we  do  not  all  as  yet  need  to  live  in  a  ceaseless 
hurry,  ever  drive,  driving  on  till  the  worn-out  machine 
breaks  down.    By  and  bye  this  life  of  unfeverish  industry, 
and  of  work  whose  results  are  tangible  only  to  people  of 
cultivation,  will  no  doubt  cease  ;  and  it  will  tend  mate- 
rially to  hasten  that  consummation  when  the  views  of  the 
Times  are  carried  out.  and  all  the  country  clergy  are  re- 
quired to  keep  a  diary  like  a  rural  policeman,  showing 
how  each  hour  of  their  time  is  spent,  and  open  to  the  in- 
spection of  their  employers.     Now.  in  a  quiet  scene  like 
this,  where  there  is  not  even  the  little  noise  of  a  village 
near,  though  I  can  hear  the   murmur  of  a  pretty  large 
river,  must  not  the  ordinary  human  being  be  a  very  dif- 
ferent being  from  what  he  would  be  were  he  sitting  in 
some  ga—lighted  counting-house  in  Manchester,  turning 
over  large  vellum-bound  volumes,  adding  long  rows  of 
figures,  talking  on  sales  and  prices  to  a  hundred  and  fifty 
people  in  the  course  of  the  day,  looking  out  through  the 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  241 

window  upon  a  foggy  atmosphere,  a  muddy  pavement,  a 
crowded  street,  huge  drays  lumbering  by  with  their  great 
horses,  with  a  general  impression  of  noise,  hurry,  smoke, 
dirt,  confusion,  and  no  rest  or  peace  ?  It  would  be  an 
interesting  thing  for  some  one  equal  to  the  task  to  go 
over  Addison's  papers  in  the  Spectator,  and  try  to  make 
out  the  siiade  of  difference  in  them  which  might  be  con- 
ceived  as  resulting  from  the  influences  of  the  place  where 
they  were  severally  written.  It  is  generally  understood 
that  the  well-known  letters  by  which  Addison  distin- 
guished his  essays  referred  to  the  places  where  they 
were  composed ;  the  letters  in  the  Clio  indicating  Chel- 
sea, London,  Islington,  and  the  Office.  Did  the  sensi- 
tive, shy  genius  feel  that  in  the  production  dated  from 
each  scene  there  would  be  some  trace  of  what  Yan- 
kees call  the  surroundings  amid  which  it  was  produced  ? 
No  doubt  a  mind  like  Addison's,  impassive  as  he  was, 
would  turn  off  very  different  material  according  to  the 
conditions  in  which  the  machine  was  working.  As  for 
Dick  Steele,  probably  it  made  very  little  difference  to 
him  where  he  was  :  at  the  coffeehouse  table,  with  noise 
and  bustle  all  about  him,  he  would  write  as  quietly  as 
though  he  had  been  quietly  at  home.  He  was  indurated 
by  long  usage ;  the  hide  of  a  hippopotamus  is  not  sensi- 
tive to  gentle  influences  which  would  be  felt  by  your 
soft  hand,  my  fair  friend.  But  in  the  case  of  ordinary 
educated  men  there  is  no  greater  fallacy  than  that  sug- 
gested by  that  vile  old  subject  for  Latin  themes,  that 
caelum,  non  animum  mutant,  qui  trans  mare  currant. 
Ordinary  people,  in  changing  the  caelum,  undergo  a  great 
change  of  the  animus  too.  A  judicious  man  would  be 
extremely  afraid  of  marrying  any  girl  in  England,  and 
forthwith  taking  her  out  to  India  with  him  ;  for  it  would 
16 


242  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

be  quite  certain  that  she  would  be  a  very  different  per- 
son there  from  what  she  had  been  here  ;  and  how  differ- 
ent and  in  what  mode  altered  and  varied  only  experience 
could  show.  So  one  might  marry  one  woman  in  York- 
shire, and  live  with  quite  another  at  Boggley-wollah  ; 
and  in  marriage  it  is  at  least  desirable  to  know  what  it  is 
you  are  getting.  Every  one  knows  people  who  are  quite 
different  people  according  as  they  are  in  town  or  coun- 
try. I  know  a  man  —  an  exceedingly  clever  and  learned 
man  —  who  in  town  is  sharp,  severe,  hasty,  a  very  little 
bitter,  and  just  a  shade  ill-tempered,  who  on  going  to  the 
country  becomes  instantly  genial,  frank,  playful,  kind, 
and  jolly :  you  would  not  know  him  for  the  same  man  if 
his  face  and  form  changed  only  half  as  much  as  his  intel- 
lectual and  moral  nature.  Many  men,  when  they  go  to 
the  country,  just  as  they  put  off  frock  coats  and  stiff 
stocks,  and  put  on  loose  shooting  suits,  big  thick  shoes,  a 
loose  soft  handkerchief  round  their  neck ;  just  as  they 
pitch  away  the  vile  hard  hat  of  city  propriety  that 
pinches,  cramps,  and  cuts  the  hapless  head,  and  replace 
it  by  the  light  yielding  wideawake  ;  do  mentally  pass 
.through  a  like  process  of  relief:  their  whole  spiritual 
being  is  looser,  freer,  less  tied  up.  Such  changes  as  that 
from  town  to  country  must,  I  should  think,  be  felt  by  all 
educated  people,  and  make  an  appreciable  difference  in 
the  moral  condition  of  all  educated  people.  Few  men 
would  feel  the  same  amid  the  purple  moors  round  Ha- 
worth,  and  amid  the  soft  English  scenery  that  you  see 
from  Richmond  Hill.  Some  individuals,  indeed,  whose 
mind  is  not  merely  torpid,  may  carry  the  same  animus 
with  them  wherever  they  go;  but  their  animus  must  be  a 
very  bad  one.  Mr.  Scrooge,  before  his  change  of  nature, 
was   no   doubt  quite    independent    of  external   circum- 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  243 

stances,  and  would  no  doubt  have  thought  it  proof  of 
great  weakness  had  he  not  been  so.  Nor  was  it  a  being 
of  an  amiable  character  in  whose  mouth  Milton  has  put 
the  words,  '  No  matter  where,  so  1  be  still  the  same ! ' 
And  even  in  his  mouth  the  sentiment  was  rather  vapour- 
ing than  true.  But  a  dull,  heavy,  prosaic,  miserly,  can- 
tankerous, cynical,  suspicious,  bitter  old  rascal  would  prob- 
ably be  much  the  same  anywhere.  Such  a  man's  na- 
ture is  indurated  against  all  the  influences  of  scenery,  as 
much  as  the  granite  rock  against  sunshine  and  showers. 

I  dare  say  there  are  few  people  who  do  not  uncon- 
sciously admit  the  principle  of  which  so  much  has  been 
said.  Few  people  can  look  at  a  pretty  tasteful  villa,  all 
gables,  turrets,  bay  windows,  twisted  chimneys,  veran- 
dahs, and  balconies,  set  in  a  pleasant  little  expanse  of 
shrubbery,  with  some  fine  forest-trees,  a  green  bit  of 
open  lawn,  and  some  winding  walks  through  clumps  of 
evergreens,  without  tacitly  concluding  that  the  people 
who  live  there  must  lead  a  very  different  life  from  that 
which  is  led  in  a  dull  smoky  street,  and  a  blackened, 
gardenless,  grassless,  treeless  house  in  town  ;  very  dif- 
ferent even  from  the  life  of  the  people  in  the  tasteless 
square  stuccoed  box,  with  a  stiff  gravel  walk  going  up 
to  its  door,  a  few  hundred  yards  off'.  If  you  are  hav- 
ing a  day's  sail  in  a  steamer,  along  a  pretty  coast  dotted 
with  pleasant  villages,  you  cannot  repress  some  notion 
that  the  human  beings  whom  you  see  loitering  about 
there  upon  the  rocks,  in  that  pure  air  and  genial  idle- 
ness, are  beings  of  a  different  order  from  those  around 
you.  You  feel  that  to  set  foot  on  that  pier,  and  to  min- 
gle with  that  throng,  would  carry  you  away  a  thousand 
miles  in  a  moment ;  and  make  you  as  different  from 
what  you   are  as  though  you  had  suddenly  dropt  from 


244  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

the  sky  into  that  quiet  voluptuous  valley  of  Typee, 
where  Hermann  Melville  was  so  perfectly  happy  till  he 
discovered  that  all  the  kindness  of  the  natives  was  in- 
tended to  make  him  the  fatter  and  more  palatable 
against  that  festival  at  which  he  was  to  be  eaten.  And 
no  wonder  that  he  felt  comfortable,  if  that  happy  valley 
was  indeed  what  he  assures  us  it  was : 

There  were  no  cares,  griefs,  troubles,  or  vexations,  in  all  Typee. 
There  were  none  of  those  thousand  sources  of  irritation  that  the 
ingenuity  of  civilized  man  has  created  to  mar  his  own  felicity. 
There  were  no  foreclosures  of  mortgages,  no  protested  notes,  no  bills 
payable,  no  debts  of  honour,  in  Typee;  no  unreasonable  tailors  or 
shoemakers  perversely  bent  on  being  paid,  no  duns  of  any  descrip- 
tion, no  assault  and  battery  attorneys  to  foment  discord,  backing 
their  clients  up  to  a  quarrel,  and  then  knocking  their  heads  together; 
no  poor  relations  everlastingly  occupying  the  spare  bedchamber,  and 
diminishing  the  elbowroom  at  the  family-table;  no  destitute  widows, 
with  their  children  starving  on  the  cold  chanties  of  the  world ;  no 
beggars,  no  debtors'  prisons,  no  proud  and  hard-hearted  nabobs  in 
Typee;  or,  to  sum  up  all  in  one  word,  —  no  Money!  That  root  of  all 
evil  was  not  to  be  found  in  the  valley. 

In  this  secluded  abode  of  happiness  there  were  no  cross  old  women, 
no  cruel  step-dames,  no  withered  spinsters,  no  love-sick  maidens,  no 
sour  old  bachelors,  no  inattentive  husbands,  no  melancholy  young 
men,  no  blubbering  youngsters,  and  no  squalling  brats.  All  was 
mirth,  fun,  and  high  good  humour. 

It  is  pleasant  to  read  such  a  description.  It  is  like 
being  carried  suddenly  from  the  Royal  Exchange  on  a 
crowded  afternoon,  to  a  grassy,  shady  bank  by  the  side 
of  a  country  river.  Probably  most  of  us  have  trav- 
elled by  railway  through  a  wild  country  ;  and  when 
we  stopped  at  some  remote  station  among  the  hills, 
have  wondered  how  the  people  there  live,  and  thought 
how  different  their  life  must  be  from  ours.  Nor  is  it  a 
mere  fancy  that  takes  possession  of  us  when  we  look  at 
the   pretty  Elizabethan  dwelling,  the  thought  of  which 


OF   THE  DWELLING.  245 

carried  us  all  the  way  to  the  South  Pacific.  If  people 
are  calm  enough  to  be  susceptible  of  external  impres- 
sions, life  really  is  very  different  there.  I  do  not  say  it 
is  necessarily  happier  ;  but  it  is  very  different.  Habit, 
indeed,  equalizes  the  practical  enjoyment  of  all  lots,  ex- 
cepting only  those  of  extreme  suffering  and  degrada- 
tion. Whatever  level  you  get  to  in  the  scale  of  advan- 
tage, you  soon  get  so  accustomed  to  it  that  you  do  not 
mind  much  about  it.  When  I  used  to  study  metaphys- 
ical philosophy,  I  remember  that  it  appeared  to  me  that 
this  thought  supplies  by  far  the  most  serious  of  all 
objections  to  the  doctrine  (as  taught  by  nature)  of  the 
Divine  benevolence.  It  is  a  graver  objection  than  the 
existence  of  positive  evil.  That  may  be  conceived  to 
be  in  some  way  inevitable ;  but  why  should  it  be  that  to 
get  a  thing  instantly  diminishes  its  value  to  half?  I 
can  think  of  a  reason  why  ;  and  a  good  reason  too  :  but 
it  is  not  drawn  from  the  domain  of  philosophy.  A  poor 
fellow,  toiling  wearily  along  the  dusty  road,  thinks  how 
happy  that  man  must  be  who  is  just  now  passing  him, 
leaning  back  upon  the  cushions  of  that  luxurious  car- 
riage, swept  along  by  that  pair  of  smoking  thorough- 
breds. Of  course  the  poor  fellow  is  mistaken.  The 
man  in  the  carriage  is  no  happier  than  he.  And,  in- 
deed, I  can  say  conscientiously  that  the  very  saddest, 
most  peevish,  most  irritable,  and  most  discontented  faces 
I  have  ever  seen,  I  have  seen  looking  out  of  extremely 
handsome  carriage-windows.  Luxury  destroys  real  en- 
joyment. There  is  more  real  enjoyment  in  riding  in  a 
wheelbarrow  than  in  driving  in  a  carriage  and  four. 
Who  does  not  remember  the  keen  relish  of  the  rapid 
run  in  the  wheelbarrow  of  early  youth,  bumping  and 
rolling  about,  and  finally  turning  a  corner  at  full  speed 


246  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

and  upsetting  ?  Who  does  not  remember  the  delight  of 
the  little  springless  carriage  that  threatened  to  dislocate 
and  grind  down  the  bones  ?  But  it  is  indeed  much  to 
be  lamented,  that  merely  to  get  near  the  possession  of 
any  coveted  thing  instantly  changes  the  entire  look  of  it : 
it  may  still  appear  very  good  and  desirable  :  but  the 
romance  is  gone.  When  Mr.  John  Campbell,  Student 
of  Theology  in  St.  Mary's  College,  St.  Andrews,  N.  B., 
was  working  away  at  his  Hebrew,  or  drilling  the  lads  to 
whom  he  acted  as  tutor,  and  living  sparingly  on  a  few 
pounds  a  year,  he  would  no  doubt  have  thought  it  a 
tremendous  thing  if  he  had  been  told  that  he  would  yet 
be  a  peer  —  that  he  would  be,  first  Lord  Chief  Justice 
and  then  Lord  High  Chancellor  of  England  —  and  that 
he  would,  upon  more  than  one  great  occasion,  preside 
over  the  assembled  aristocracy  of  Britain.  But  as  he 
got  on  step  by  step  the  gradation  took  off  the  force  of 
contrast :  each  successive  step  appeared  natural  enough, 
no  doubt :  and  now,  when  he  is  fairly  at  the  top  of  the 
tree,  if  that  most  amiable  and  able  Judge  should  ever 
wish  to  realize  his  elevation,  I  suppose  he  can  do  so  only 
by  recurring  in  thought  to  the  links  of  St.  Andrews,  and 
to  the  days  when  he  drilled  his  pupils  in  Latin  and 
Greek.  Student  of  Divinity,  newspaper  reporter,  utter 
barrister,  King's  Counsel,  Solicitor-General,  Member  for 
Edinburgh,  Attorney-General,  Baron  Campbell  of  St. 
Andrews,  Chief  Justice  of  England,  Lord  Chancellor  of 
Great  Britain  —  each  successive  point  was  natural 
enough  when  won,  though  the  end  made  a  great  change 
from  the  Manse  of  Cupar.  And  when  another  Scotch 
clergyman's  son,  from  a  parish  adjoining  that  of  Lord 
Campbell's  father,  also  went  up  to  London  about  the 
same  time,  a  poor  struggling  artist,  he  and  all  his  family 


OF   THE  DWELLING.  247 

would  doubtless  have  thought  it  a  grand  elevation, 
had  they  been  told  that  he  was  to  become  one  of  the 
most  distinguished  members  of  the  Royal  Academy. 
There  is  something  intensely  affecting  in  the  letters  which 
the  minister  of  Cults  (it  was  a  very  poor  living)  sent  to 
his  boy  in  London,  saying  that  he  could,  by  pinching, 
send  him,  if  needful,  four  or  five  pounds.  But  before 
Sir  David  became  the  great  man  he  grew,  old  Mr.  Wil- 
kie  was  in  his  grave  :  '  his  son  came  to  honour,  and  he 
knew  it  not.'  No  doubt  it  was  better  as  it  was ;  but  if 
ybu  or  I,  kindly  reader,  had  had  the  ordering  of  things, 
the  worthy  man  should  have  lived  to  see  what  would 
have  gladdened  his  simple  heart  at  last. 

Still,  making  every  deduction  for  the  levelling  result  of 
getting  used  to  things,  a  great  deal  of  the  enjoyment  of 
life,  high  or  low,  depends  on  the  scenery  amid  which  one 
dwells,  and  the  house  in  which  one  lives  —  I  mean  the 
house  regarded  even  in  a  merely  aesthetic  point  of  view. 
It  needs  no  argument  to  prove  that  if  one's  abode  is  sub- 
ject to  the  grosser  physical  disadvantages  of  smoky 
chimneys,  damp  walls,  neighbouring  bogs,  incurable 
draughts,  rattling  windows,  unfitting  doors,  and  the  like, 
the  result  upon  the  temper  and  the  views  of  the  man 
thus  afflicted  will  not  be  a  pleasing  one.  A  constant  suc- 
cession of  little  contemptible  worries  tends  to  foster  a 
querulous,  grumbling  disposition,  which  renders  a  human 
being  disagreeable  to  himself  and  intolerable  to  his 
friends.  Real,  great  misfortunes  and  trials  may  serve  to 
ennoble  the  character;  but  ever-recurring  petty  annoy- 
ances produce  a  littleness  and  irritability  of  mind.  And 
while  great  misfortune  at  once  engages  our  sympathy, 
petty  annoyances  ill  borne  make  the  sufferer  a  laughing- 
stock.    There  is  something  dignified  in  Napoleon  smashed 


248  THE   MORAL   INFLUENCES 

at  Waterloo  :  there  is  nothing  fine  about  Napoleon  at  St. 
Helena,  swearing  at  his  ill-made  soup,  and  cursing  up 
and  down  stairs  at  his  insufficient  allowance  of  clean 
shirts.  But  I  am  not  now  talking  of  abodes  pressed  by 
physical  inconveniences.  It  is  somewhat  of  a  truism  to 
say  a  man  cannot  be  comfortable  when  he  is  uncomfort- 
able ;  and  that  is  the  sum  of  what  is  to  be  said  on  that 
head.  I  mean  now  that  one's  home,  aesthetically  regarded. 
has  much  influence  upon  our  enjoyment  of  life.  It  is  a 
great  matter  towards  making  the  best  of  this  world  (and 
possibly,  too.  of  the  next),  that  our  dwelling  shall  be  a 
pretty  one,  a  pleasant  one,  and  placed  amid  pleasant 
scenes.  It  is  a  constant  pleasure  to  live  in  such  a  home ; 
and  it  is  a  still  greater  pleasure  to  make  it.  I  do  not 
think  I  have  ever  seen  happier  people,, or  people  who 
appeared  more  thoroughly  enviable,  than  people  who 
have  been  building  a  pretty  residence  in  the  country. 
Of  course  they  must  be  building  it  for  themselves  to 
have  the  full  satisfaction  of  it  ;  also  it  must  not  be  too 
large  ;  and  finally,  it  must  not  be  bigger  nor  grander  than 
they  can  afford.  The  last-named  point  is  essential.  A 
duke  inherits  his  castle  —  he  did  not  build  it;  and  it  is 
too  large  and  splendid  for  the  peculiar  feeling  which  I 
am  describing.  It  has  its  own  peculiar  charms  :  the  charm 
of  vastness  of  dwelling  and  domain  ;  the  charm  of  hoary 
age  and  historic  memories,  and  of  connexion  with 
departed  ancestors,  and  of  associations  which  the  mil- 
lions of  the  parvenu  cannot  buy.  But  it  lacks  the 
especial  charm  which  Scott  felt  when  he  was  building 
Abbotsford  ;  and  which  lesser  men  feel  when  sitting  on  a 
stone  on  a  summer  morning,  and  watching  the  walls  coin"' 
up,  listening  to  the  clinking  of  the  chisel,  planning  out 
the  few  acres  of  ground,  and  idealizing  the  life  which  is 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  249 

to  be  led  there ;  seeing  with  half-closed  eyes  that  muddy 
wheel-cut  expanse  all  green  and  trim ;  and  little  Jamie 
running  about  the  walk  which  will  be  there  in  after-days ; 
and  little  Lucy  diligently  planting  weeds  in  the  corner 
where  her  garden  will  be.  Here,  surely,  we  think,  the 
last  days  or  years  may  peacefully  go  by  ;  and  here  may 
we,  though  somewhat  scarred  in  the  battle  of  life,  and 
somewhat  worn  with  its  cares,  find  a  quiet  haven  at  last. 
To  me  it  is  always  pleasant  reading  when  I  fall  in  with 
books  about  planning  and  building  such  homes  as  these. 
At  the  mention  of  the  Cottage,  and  even  of  the  Villa 
(though  I  don't  like  that  latter  word,  it  sounds  vulgar  and 
cockneyfied  and  affected  ;  but  I  fear  we  must  accept  it, 
for  there  is  no  other  which  conveys  the  idea  of  the 
modest  yet  elegant  country-house  for  people  of  refine- 
ment, but  not  of  great  means),  there  rises  up  before  the 
mind's-eye,  as  if  by  an  enchanter's  wand,  a  whole  life  of 
quiet  enjoyment.  Surely,  life  in  the  cottage  or  the 
country-house  might  be  made  a  very  pleasing,  pure,  and 
happy  thing.  In  that  unbreathed  air,  amid  those  beauti- 
ful scenes,  surrounded  by  the  gentle  processes  and  teach- 
ings of  nature,  it  is  but  that  outward  nature  and  human 
life  should,  on  some  fair  summer  day,  be  wrought  into 
a  happy  conformity ;  and  we  should  need  no  other 
heaven.  Take  the  outward  creation  at  her  best,  and  for 
all  the  thorns  and  thistles  of  the  Fall,  she  would  do  yet ! 
I  find  a  great  pleasure  in  reading  books  of  practical 
architecture  :  and  I  have  lately  found  out  one  by  an 
American  architect,  one  Mr.  Calvert  Vaux,  which  car- 
ries one  into  fresh  fields.  It  is  a  large  handsome  volume, 
luxurious  in  the  size  of  its  type,  and  admirable  for  the 
excellence  of  its  abundant  illustrations.  I  have  more  to 
say  of  its  contents  by-and-bye,  and  shall  here  say  only, 


250  THE  MORAL   INFLUENCES 

that  to  read  such  a  book  with  pleasure,  the  reader  must 
have  some  little  imagination  and  a  good  deal  of  sympa- 
thy, so  as  not  to  rest  on  mere,  architects'  designs  and 
builders'  specifications,  but  to  picture  out  and  enter  into 
the  quiet  life  which  these  suggest.  Everything  depends 
upon  thai.  Therein  lies  the  salt  of  such  a  book.  The 
enjoyment  of  all  things  beyond  eating  and  drinking  arises 
out  of  our  idealizing  them.  Do  you  think  that  a  child 
who  will  spend  an  hour  delightedly  in  galloping  round 
the  garden  on  his  horse,  which  horse  is  a  stick,  regards 
that  stick  as  the  mere  bit  of  wood  ?  No  :  that  stick  is  to 
him  instinct  with  imaginings  of  a  pony's  pattering  feet 
and  shaggy  mane,  and  erect  little  ears.  It  is  not  so  long 
since  the  writer  was  accustomed  to  ride  on  horseback  in 
that  inexpensive  fashion,  but  what  he  can  remember  all 
that  the  stick  was  ;  and  remember  too  how  sometimes 
fancy  would  flag,  the  idealizing  power  would  break  down, 
and  from  being  a  horse  the  stick  became  merely  a  stick, 
a  dull,  wearisome,  stupid  thing.  And  of  what  little 
things  imagination,  thus  elevating  and  enchanting  them, 
can  make  how  much !  You  remember  the  poor  little 
solitary  girl,  in  the  wretched  kitchen  of  Sally  Brass,  in 
the  Old  Curiosity  Shop.  Never  was  there  life  more 
bare  of  anything  like  enjoyment  than  the  life  which  that 
poor  creature  led.  Think,  you  folk  who  grumble  at 
your  lot,  of  a  life  whose  features  are  sketched  by  such 
liins  as  a  dark  cellar,  utter  solitude,  black  beetles,  cold 
potatoes,  cuffs  and  kicks.  Yet  the  idealizing  power 
could  convey  some  faint  tinge  of  enjoyment  even  into  the 
cellar  of  House  of  Brass.  The  poor  little  thing,  when 
she  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Richard  Swiveller, 
inquired  of  him  had  he  ever  tasted  orange-peel  wine. 
How  was  it  made,  he  asked.     The  recipe  was  simple  : 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  251 

take  a  tumbler  of  cold  water,  put  a  little  bit  of  orange-peel 
into  it,  and  the  beverage  is  ready  for  use.  It  has  not 
much  taste,  added  the  little  solitary,  unless  you  make  be- 
lieve very  much.  Sound  and  deep  little  philosopher ! 
We  must  apply  the  same  prescription  to  life,  and  all  by 
which  life  is  surrounded.  You  are  not  to  accept  them 
as  bare  prosaic  facts  :  you  must  make  believe  very  much. 
Scott  made  believe  very  much  at  Abbotsford ;  we  all 
make  believe  very  much  at  Christmas-time.  Likewise 
at  sight  of  the  first  snowdrop  in  springs  after  we  have 
begun  to  grow  old  ;  also  when  hawthorn  blossoms  and 
lilacs  come  again.  And  what  a  bare,  cold,  savourless 
life  is  sketched  by  the  memorable  lines  which  set  before 
us  the  entire  character  of  a  man  who  could  not  make  be- 
lieve :  — 

In  vain,  through  every  changing  year, 

Did  nature  lead  him  as  before; 
A  primrose  by  a  river's  brim, 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, — 

And  it  was  nothing  more ! 

Let  me  recommend  to  the  man  with  a  taste  for  such 
subjects,  Mr.  Sanderson's  Rural  Architecture,  a  neat  lit- 
tle manual  of  a  hundred  pages,  with  a  number  of  draw- 
ings and  ground-plans  of  labourers'  cottages,  pretty  little 
villas,  village  schools,  and  farm-steadings.  And  any 
reader  may  call  it  his  upon  payment  of  one  shilling.  To 
the  man  who  has  learned  to  make  believe,  there  will  be 
more  than  a  shilling's  worth  of  enjoyment  in  the  frontis- 
piece, which  is  a  plain  but  pretty  Gothic  cottage,  sur- 
rounded with  trees,  a  little  retired  from  the  road,  which 
is  reached  through  a  neat  rustic  gateway,  and  with  the 
6pire  of  a  village  church  two  hundred  yards  off,  peeping 
through  trees  and  backed  by  quiet  fields  rising  into  hills 


252  THE   MORAL    INFLUENCES 

of  no  more  than  English  height.  A  footpath  winds 
through  the  field  towards  the  clump  of  wood  in  which 
stands  the  church.  The  book  is  a  sensible  and  well-in- 
formed one.  Its  author  tells  us,  but  not  till  the  seven- 
tieth page  of  his  hundred,  that  he  is  '  simply  desirous  of 
having  an  agreeable  half-hour's  chat  with  the  reader, 
who  may  take  a  fancy  to  indulge  in  the  instructive  pas- 
time of  building  his  own  house,  and  who  does  not  please 
to  appear  thoroughly  ignorant  of  the  matter  he  is  about.' 

Mr.  Sanderson  appears  from  his  book  to  have  but  a 
poor  opinion  of  human  nature.  He  is  by  no  means  a 
'  confidence-man.'  The  book  is  full  of  cautions  as  to 
the  necessity  of  closely  watching  work-people  lest  they 
should  cheat  you,  and  do  their  work  in  a  dishonest  and 
insufficient  manner.  I  lament  to  say  that  my  own  little 
experience  leads  me  to  think  that  these  cautions  are  by  no 
means  unnecessary.  I  do  not  think  that  builders  and 
carpenters  are  as  bad  as  horsedealers,  whose  word  no 
man  in  his  senses  should  regard  as  of  the  worth  of  a  pin  ; 
but  it  is  extremely  advisable  to  keep  a  sharp  eye  upon 
them  while  their  work  is  progressing.  Work  improperly 
done,  or  done  with  insufficient  materials,  will  certainly 
cause  much  expense  and  annoyance  at  a  future  day  ;  still, 
the  constantly-recurring  statements  as  to  the  likelihood  of 
fraud,  leave  on  one's  mind  an  uncomfortable  impression. 
Our  race  is  not  in  a  sound  state.  But  perhaps  it  is  too 
severe  to  judge  that  a  decent-looking  and  well-to-do  indi- 
vidual is  a  dishonest  man,  merely  because  he  will  at  any 
time  tell  a  lie  to  make  a  little  money  by  it. 

There  is  a  satisfaction  in  finding  confirmation  of  one's 
own  views  in  the  writings  of  other  men  ;  and  so  I 
quote  with  pleasure  the  following  from  Dr.  South  wood 
Smith  :  — 


OF  THE    DWELLING.  253 

A  clean,  fresh,  and  well-ordered  house  exercises  over  its  inmates  a 
mural,  no  less  than  a  physical  influence,  and  has  a  direct  tendency  to 
make  the  members  of  the  family  sober,  peaceable,  and  considerate  of 
the  feelings  and  happiness  of  each  other;  nor  is  it  difficult  to  trace  a 
connexion  between  habitual  feelings  of  this  sort  and  the  formation  of 
habits  of  respect  for  property,  for  the  laws  in  general,  and  even  for 
those  higher  duties  and  obligations  the  observance  of  which  no  laws 
can  enforce.  Whereas,  a  filthy,  squalid,  unwholesome  dwelling,  in 
which  none  of  the  decencies  common  to  society  —  even  in  the  lowest 
stage  of  civilization  —  are  or  can  be  observed,  tends  to  make  every 
dweller  in  such  a  hovel  regardless  of  the  feelings  and  happiness  of 
each  other,  selfish,  and  sensual.  And  the  connexion  is  obvious  be- 
tween the  constant  indulgence  of  appetites  and  passions  of  this  class, 
and  the  formation  of  habits  of  idleness,  dishonesty,  debauchery,  and 
violence. 

There  is  something  very  touching  in  a  description  in 
Household  Words  of  the  moral  results  of  wretched  dwell- 
ings, such  as  those  in  parts  of  Bethnal-green,  in  the  east- 
ern region  of  London.  Misery  and  anxiety  have  here 
crushed  energy  out ;  the  people  are  honest,  but  they  are 
palsied  by  despair  :  — 

The  people  of  this  district  are  not  criminal.  A  lady  might  walk 
unharmed  at  midnight  through  their  wretched  lanes.  Crime  demands 
a  certain  degree  of  energy ;  but  if  there  were  ever  any  harm  in  these 
well-disposed  people,  it  has  been  tamed  out  of  them  by  sheer  want. 
They  have  been  sinking  for  years.  Ten  years  ago,  or  less,  the  men 
were  politicians;  now,  they  have  sunk  below  that  stage  of  discontent. 
They  are  generally  very  still  and  hopeless;  cherishing  each  other; 
tender  not  only  towards  their  own  kin,  but  towards  their  neighbours; 
and  they  are  subdued  by  sorrow  to  a  manner  strangely  resembling 
the  quiet  and  refined  tone  of  the  most  polished  circles. 

Very  true  to  nature  !  How  well  one  can  understand 
the  state  of  mind  of  a  poor  man  quite  crushed  and  spirit- 
broken  :  poisoned  by  ceaseless  anxiety  ;  with  no  heart  to 
do  anything  ;  many  a  time  wishing  that  he  might  but 
creep  into  a  quiet  grave ;  and  meanwhile  trying  to  shrink 
out  of  sight  and  slip  by  unnoticed  !     Despair  nerves  for 


254  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

a  little  while,  but  constant  cave  saps,  and  poisons,  and  pal- 
sies. Nor  does  it  do  so  in  Bethnal-green  alone,  or  only 
in  dwellings  which  are  undrained  and  unventilated,  and 
which  cannot  exclude  rain  and  cold.  Elsewhere,  as 
many  of  my  readers  have  perhaps  learned  for  themselves, 
it  has  shattered  many  a  nervous  system,  unstrung  many 
a  once  vigorous  mind,  crushed  down  many  a  once  hope- 
ful spirit,  and  aged  many  a  man  who  should  have  been 
young  by  his  years. 

I  suppose  it  is  now  coming  to  be  acknowledged  by  all 
men  of  sense,  that  it  is  a  Christian  duty  to  care  for  our 
fellow-creatures'  bodies  as  well  as  for  their  souls  ;  and 
that  it  is  hateful  cant  and  hypocrisy  to  pray  for  the  re- 
moval of  diseases  which  God  by  the  revelations  of  Na- 
ture has  taught  us  may  be  averted  by  the  use  of  physical 
means,  while  these  means  have  not  been  faithfully  em- 
ployed. When  cholera  or  typhus  comes,  let  us  white- 
wash blackened  walls,  flush  obstructed  sewers,  clear  away 
intermural  pigsties,  abolish  cesspools,  admit  abundant  air 
and  light,  and  supply  unstinted  water:  —  and  having 
done  all  we  can,  let  as  then  pray  for  God's  blessing  upon 
what  we  have  done,  and  for  His  protection  from  the 
plague  which  by  these  means  we  are  seeking  to  hold 
away  from  us.  Prayers  and  pains  must  go  together  alike 
in  the  physical  and  in  the  spiritual  world.  And  I  think 
it  is  now  coming  to  be  acknowledged  by  most  rational 
beings,  that  houses  ought  to  be  pretty  as  well  as  healthy; 
and  that  bouses,  even  of  the  humblest  class,  may  be  pretty 
as  well  as  healthy.  By  the  Creator's  kind  arrangement, 
beauty  and  use  go  together  ;  the  prettiest  house  will  be 
the  healthiest,  the  most  convenient,  and  the  most  com- 
fortable.    And  I  am  persuaded  that  great  moral  results 


OF    THE    DWELLING.  255 

follow  from    people's    houses    being    pretty   as    well    as 
healthy.     Every  one  understands  at  once  that  a  wretched 
hovel,  dirty,  ruinous,  stifling,  bug-infested,  dunghill  sur- 
rounded,  will   destroy  any  latent  love   of  neatness   and 
orderliness  in  a  poor  man  ;  will  destroy  the  love  of  home, 
that   preservative   against  temptation  which  ranks   next 
after  religion  in  the  heart,  and  send  the  poor  man  to  the 
public-house,  with  all  its  ruinous  temptations.     But  prob- 
ably it  is  less  remembered  than  it  ought  to  be,  that  the 
home  of  poor  man  or  well-to-do  man  ought  to  be  pleas- 
ing  and   inviting,   as   well   as   healthy.     If  not,   he   will 
not  and  cannot  have  the  feeling  towards  it  that  it  is  de- 
sirable he  should  have.     And  all  this  is  not  less  to  be 
sought  after  in  the  case  of  people  who  are  so  well  off  that 
though   their  home  afford   no  gratification  of  taste,  and 
even  lack  the  comfort  which  does  not  necessarily  come 
with  mere  abundance,  they  are  not  likely  to  seek  refuge 
at  the  ale-house,  or  to  take  to  sottish  or  immoral  courses 
of  any  kind.     It   makes   an   educated  man  domestic,  it 
makes  him  a  lover  of  neatness  and  accuracy,  it  makes 
him  gentle  and  amiable  (I  mean  in  all  but  very  extreme 
cases),  to  give  him  a  pretty  home.     I  wish  it  were  gen- 
erally understood  that  it  does  not  of  necessity  cost  a  shil- 
ling more  to  build  a  pretty  house  of  a  certain  size,  than 
to  build  a  hideous  one  yielding  the  like  accommodation. 
Taste  costs  nothing.     If  you  have  a  given  quantity  of 
building  materials  to  arrange  in  order,  it  is  just  as  easy 
and  just   as   cheap   to   arrange   them   in   a    tasteful   and 
graceful  order  and  collocation,  as  in  a  tasteless,  irritating, 
offensive,  and  disgusting   one.     Elaborate    ornament,  of 
course,  costs  dear:  but  it  does  not  need  elaborate  orna- 
ment to  make  a  pleasing  house  which  every  man  of  taste 
will  feel  enjoyment  in  looking  at.     Simple  gracefulness  is 


256  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

all  that  is  essentially  needful  in  cottage  and  villa  archi- 
tecture. And  in  this  aesthetic  age,  when  there  is  a  gen- 
eral demand  for  greater  beauty  in  all  physical  appliances; 
when  we  are  getting  rid  of  the  vile  old  willow-pattern, 
when  bedroom  crockery  must  be  of  graceful  form  and  em- 
bellishment, when  grates  and  fenders,  chairs  and  couches, 
window  curtains  and  carpets,  oilcloth  for  lobby  floors  and 
paper  for  covering  walls,  must  all  be  designed  in  con- 
formity with  the  dictates  of  an  elevated  taste,  —  it  is  not 
too  much  to  hope  that  the  day  will  come  when  every  hu- 
man dwelling  that  shall  be  built  shall  be  so  built  and  so 
placed  that  it  shall  form  a  picture  pleasant  to  all  men  to 
look  at.  It  is  not  necessary  to  say  that  this  implies  a 
considerable  change  from  the  state  of  matters  at  present 
existing  in  most  districts  of  this  country.  And  I  trust  it 
is  equally  unnecessary  to  say  what  school  of  domestic 
architecture  must  predominate  if  the  day  we  wish  for  is 
ever  to  come.  I  trust  that  all  my  readers  (excepting  of 
course  the  one  impracticable  man  in  each  hundred,  who 
always  thinks  differently  from  everybody  else,  and  always 
thinks  wrong)  will  agree  with  me  in  holding  it  as  an 
axiom  needing  no  argument  to  support  it,  that  every 
building  which  ranks  under  the  class  of  villa  or  cottage, 
must,  if  intended  to  be  tasteful  or  pleasing,  be  built  in 
some  variety  of  that  grand  school  which  is  commonly 
styled  the  Gothic. 

I  know  quite  well  that  there  are  many  persons  in  this 
world  who  would  scout  the  idea  that  there  is  any  neces- 
sity or  any  use  for  people  who  are  not  rich,  to  make  any 
provision  for  their  ideal  life,  for  their  taste  for  the  beau- 
tiful. I  can  picture  to  myself  some  utilitarian  old  hunks, 
sharp-nosed,  shrivelled-faccd.  with  contracted  brow,  nar- 
row intellect,  and  no  feeling  or  taste  at  all,  who  would  be 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  257 

ready  (so  far  as  he  was  able)  to  ridicule  my  assertion 
that  it  is  desirable  and  possible  to  provide  something  to 
gratify  taste  and  to  elevate  and  refine  feeling,  in  the  as- 
pect and  arrangement  of  even  the  humblest  human  dwell- 
ings. Beauty,  some  donkeys  think,  is  the  right  and 
inheritance  of  the  wealthy  alone  ;  food  to  eat,  clothes  to 
wear,  a  roof  to  shelter  from  the  weather,  are  all  that 
working  men  should  pretend  to.  And  indeed,  if  the  se- 
cret belief  of  such  dull  grovellers  were  told,  it  would  be 
that  all  people  with  less  than  a  good  many  hundreds  a 
year  are  stepping  out  of  their  sphere  and  encroaching  on 
the  demesne  of  their  betters,  when  they  aim  at  making 
their  dwelling  such  that  it  shall  please  the  cultivated  eye 
as  well  as  keep  off  wind  and  wet.  Such  mortals  cannot 
understand  or  sympathize  with  the  gratification  arising 
from  the  contemplation  of  objects  which  are  graceful  and 
beautiful;  and  they  think  that  if  there  be  such  a  gratifi- 
cation at  all,  it  is  a  piece  of  impudence  in  a  poor  man  to 
aim  at  it.  It  is,  they  consider,  a  luxury  to  which  he  has 
no  right ;  it  is  as  though  a  ploughman  should  think  to 
have  champagne  on  his  simple  dinner-table.  I  verily 
believe  that  there  are  numbers  of  wealthy  men,  espe- 
cially in  the  ranks  of  those  who  have  made  their  own 
wealth,  and  who  receive  little  education  in  youth,  who 
think  that  the  supply  of  animal  necessities  is  all  that  any 
mortal  (but  themselves,  perhaps)  can  need.  I  have 
known  of  such  a  man,  who  said  with  amazement  of  a 
youth  whose  health  and  life  premature  care  was  sap- 
ping, '  He  is  well-fed,  and  well-dressed,  and  well-lodged, 
and  what  the  capital  D  more  can  the  fellow  want?' 
Why,  if  he  had  been  a  horse  or  a  pig,  he  would  have 
wanted  nothing  more  ;  but  the  possession  of  a  rational 
soul  brings  with  it  pressing  wants  which  are  not  of  a  ma- 
ll 


258  THE  MORAL   INFLUENCES 

terial  nature,  which  are  not  to  be  supplied  by  material 
things,  and  which  are  not  felt  by  pigs  and  horses.  And 
the  craving  for  surrounding  objects  of  grace  and  beauty 
is  one  of  these  ;  and  it  cannot  be  killed  out  but  by  many 
years  of  sordid  money-making,  or  racking  anxiety,  or 
grinding  want.  The  man  whose  whole  being  is  given 
to  finding  food  and  raiment  and  sleep,  is  but  a  somewhat 
more  intelligent  horse.  We  have  something  besides  a 
body,  whose  needs  must  be  supplied  ;  or  if  not  supplied, 
then  crushed  out,  and  we  be  brought  thus  nearer  to  the 
condition  of  being  mere  soulless  bodies.  Mr.  Vaux  has 
some  just  remarks  on  the  importance  of  a  pleasant  home 
to  the  young.  It  is  indeed  a  wretched  thing  when, 
whether  from  selfish  heedlessness  or  mistaken  principle, 
the  cravings  of  youthful  imagination  and  feeling  are  sys- 
tematically ignored,  and  life  toned  down  to  the  last  and 
most  prosaic  level.     Says  Mr.  Vaux  — 

It  is  riot  for  ourselves  alone,  but  for  the  sake  of  our  children,  that 
we  should  love  to  build  our  homes,  whether  they  be  villas,  cottages, 
or  log-houses,  beautifully  and  well.  The  young  people  are  mostly  at 
home:  it  is  their  storehouse  for  amusement,  their  opportunity  for 
relaxation,  their  main  resource;  and  thus  they  are  exposed  to  its  in- 
fluence tor  good  or  evil  unceasingly:  their  pliable,  susceptible  minds 
Cake  in  it-  whole  expression  with  the  fullest  possible  force,  and  with 
unerring  accuracy.  It  is  only  by  degrees  that  the  young  hungry 
soul,  born  and  bred  in  a  hard,  unlovely  home,  accepts  the  coarse  fate 
to  which  not  the  poverty  but  the  indifference  of  its  parents  condemns 
it.  It  is  many  many  years  before  the  irrepressible  longing  becomes 
utterly  hopeless:  perhaps  it  is  never  crushed  out  entirely;  but  it  is 
so  stupified  by  slow  degrees  into  despairing  stagnation,  if  a  perpet- 
ually recurring  blank  surrounds  it,  tlnit  it  often  seems  to  die,  and  to 
make  no  sign:  the  meagre,  joyless,  torpid  home  atmosphere  in  which 
It  is  forced  to  vegetate  absolutely  starves  it  out;  and  thus  the  good 
intention  that  the  all-wise  Creator  had  in  view,  when  instilling  a 
desire  for  the  beautiful  into  the  life  of  the  infant,  is  painfully  frus- 
trated. It  is  frequently  from  this  cause,  and  from  this  alone,  that  an 
impulsive,  high-spirited,  light-hearted  boy  will  dwindle  by  de 


OF  THE  DWELLING.  259 

into  a  sharp,  shrewd,  narrow-minded,  and  selfish  youth;  from  thence 
again  into  a  prudent,  hard,  and  horny  manhood;  and  at  last  into  a 
covetous,  unloving,  and  unloved  old  age.  The  single  explanation  is 
all-sufficient:  he  never  had  a  pleasant  home.* 

I  trust  my  readers  will  conclude  from  this  brief  speci- 
men of  Mr.  Vaux's  quality,  that  if  he  be  as  thoroughly 
up  in  the  practice  of  pleasant  rural  architecture  as  he  is 
in  the  philosophy  of  it,  he  will  be  a  very  agreeable  archi- 
tect indeed.     And,  in  truth,  he  is  so,  and  his  book  is  a 
very  pleasant  one.     It  is  a  handsome  royal  octavo  vol- 
ume of  above  three  hundred  pages ;  it  is  prodigally  illus- 
trated with   excellent  wood-engravings,  which  show  the 
man  who  intends  building  a  country-house  an  abundance 
of  engaging  examples  from  which  to  choose  one.     Nor 
are  we  shown  merely  a  number  of  taking  views  in  per- 
spective ;  we  have  likewise  the  ground-plan  of  each  floor, 
showing  the  size  and  height  of  each  chamber;  and  fur- 
ther we  are   furnished  with  a  careful  calculation  of  the 
probable  expense  of  each  cottage  or  villa.     Nor  does  Mr. 
Vaux's  care  extend  only  to  the  house  proper :  he  shows 
some  good  designs  for  rustic  gateways   and  fences,  and 
some  pretty  plans  for  laying  out  and  planting  the  piece  of 
shrubbery  and  lawn  which  surrounds  the  abode.     Amer- 
ica, every  one  knows,  is   a  country  where  a  man  must 
push  if  he  wishes  to  get  on  ;  he  must  not  be  held  back  by 
any  false  modesty ;  and   Mr.  Vaux's   book  is  not   free 
from  the  suspicion  of  being  a  kind  of  advertisement  of  its 
author,  who  is  described  on  the  title-page   as  '  Calvert 
Vaux,  Architect,  late  Downing  and  Vaux,  of  Newburgh, 
on  the  Hudson.'     Then,  on  an  otherwise   blank  page  at 
the  end  of  the  volume,  we  find  in  large  capitals  the  signifi- 
cant inscription,  which  renders  it  impossible  for  any  one 

*   Villas  and  Cottages,  pp.  115,  116. 


2  GO  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

who  reads  the  book  to  say  that  he  does  not  know  where 
to  find  Mr.  Vaux  when  he  wants  him  :  — 

'Calvert  Vaux.  Architect, 

Appletons  Building, 

318,  Broadway.' 

American  architecture  appears  to  stand  in  sad  need  of 
improvement.  Mr.  Vaux  tells  us,  no  doubt  very  truly, 
that  'ugly  buildings  are  the  almost  invariable  rule.'  In 
that  land  of  measureless  forests  there  is  a  building  ma- 
terial  common,  which  is  little  used  now  in  Britain  —  to 
wit,  wood.  Still,  wood  will  furnish  the  material  for  very 
graceful  and  picturesque  houses,  even  when  in  the  rude 
form  of  logs  ;  and  the  true  blight  of  housebuilding  in 
America  was  less  the  poverty  and  the  hurry  of  the  early 
colonists,  than  their  puritan  hatred  and  contempt  of  art, 
and  of  everything  beautiful.  Further,  the  democratic 
spirit  could  not  tolerate  the  notion  of  anything  being  suf- 
fered to  flourish  which,  as  was  wrongly  thought,  was  to 
minister  to  the  delight  of  only  a  select  few. 

American  houses  are  for  the  most  part  square  boxes, 
with  no  character  at  all.  They  are  generally  painted 
white,  with  bright  srreen  blinds  :  the  effect  is  staring  and 
ugly.  In  America,  a  perfectly  straight  line  is  esteemed 
the  line  of  beauty,  and  a  cube  the  most  graceful  of  forms. 
Two  large  gridirons,  laid  across  one  another,  exhibit  the 
ground-plan  of  the  large  towns.  Two  smaller  gridirons 
represent  the  villages.  Mr.  Vaux  is  strong  for  the  use 
of  graceful  curves,  and  for  laying  out  roads  with  some  re- 
gard to  the  formation  of  the  ground,  and  the  natural 
features  of  interest.  But  a  man  of  taste  must  meet 
many  mortifications  in  a  country  where  the  following 
barbarity  could  be  perpetrated  :  — 


OF   THE  DWELLING.  261' 

In  a  case  that  recently  occurred  near  a  country  town  at  some  dis- 
tance from  New  York,  a  road  was  run  through  a  very  beautiful  estate, 
one  agreeable  feature  of  which  was  a  pretty  though  small  pond,  that, 
even  in  tbe  dryest  seasons,  was  always  full  of  water,  and  would  have 
formed  an  agreeable  adjunct  to  a  country  seat.  A  single  straight  pencil 
line  on  the  plan  doubtless  marked  out  the  direction  of  the  road;  and  as 
this  line  happened  to  go  straight  through  the  pond,  straight  through  the 
pond  was  the  road  accordingly  carried,  the  owner  of  the  estate  personal- 
ly superintending  the  operation,  and  thus  spoiling  his  sheet  of  water, 
diminishing  the  value  of  his  lands,  and  incurring  expense  by  the  cost  of 
filling-in  without  any  advantage  whatever;  for  a  winding  road  so  laid 
out  as  to  skirt  the  pond  would  have  been  far  more  attractive  and  agree- 
able than  the  harsh,  straight  line  that  is  now  scored  like  a  railway  track 
clear  though  the  undulating  surface  of  the  property ;  and  such  barbar- 
isms are  of  constant  occurrence. 

No  doubt  they  are,  and  they  are  of  frequent  recurrence 
nearer  home.  I  have  known  places  where,  if  you  are 
anxious  to  get  a  body  of  men  to  make  any  improvement 
upon  a  church  or  school-house,  it  is  necessary  that  you 
should  support  your  plan  solely  by  considerations  of  util- 
ity. Even  to  suggest  the  increase  of  beauty  which  would 
result  would  be  quite  certain  to  knock  the  entire  scheme 
on  the  head. 

Some  features  of  American  house-building  follow  from 
the  country  and  climate.  Such  are  the  verandahs,  and 
the  hooded-windows  which  form  part  of  the  design  of 
every  villa  and  every  cottage  represented  in  Mr.  Vaux's 
book.  The  climate  makes  these  desirable,  and  even  es- 
sential. Such,  too,  is  the  abundance  of  houses  built  of 
wood,  several  designs  for  such  houses  being  of  consider- 
able pretension.  And  only  a  hurried  and  hasty  people, 
with  little  notion  of  building  for  posterity,  would  accept 
the  statement,  that  in  building  with  brick,  eight  inches 
thick  are  quite  enough  for  the  walls  of  any  country-house, 
however  large.  The  very  slightest  brick  walls  run  up  in 
England  are,  I  believe,  at  least  twelve  inches  thick.    The 


262  THE  MORAL  INFLUENCES 

materials  for  roofing  are  very  different  from  those  to 
which  we  are  accustomed.  Slates  are  little  used,  having 
to  be  brought  from  England  ;  tin  is  not  uncommon. 
Thick  canvas  is  thought  to  make  a  good  roof  when  the 
surface  is  not  great ;  zinc  is  a  good  deal  employed ;  but 
the  favourite  roofing  material  is  shingle,  which  makes  a 
roof  pleasing  to  American  eyes. 

It  is  agreeably  varied  in  surface,  and  assume*  by  age  a  soft 
pleasant-,  neutral  tint  that  harmonizes  with  any  colour  that  may  be 
used  in  the  building. 

I  am  not  much  captivated  bv  Mr.  Vaux's  description 
of  the  representative  American  drawing-room,  which,  it 
appears,  is  entitled  the  best  parlour :  — 

The  walls  are  hardfinished  white,  the  woodwork  is  white,  and  a 
white  marble  mantlepiece  is  fitted  over  a  fireplace  which  is  never 
used.  The  floor  is  covered  with  a  carpet  of  excellent  quality,  and  of 
a  large  and  decidedly  sprawling  pattern,  made  up  of  scrolls  and  flow- 
ers in  gay  and  vivid  colours.  A  round  table  with  a  cloth  on  it,  and  a 
thin  layer  of  books  in  smart  bindings,  occupies  the  centre  of  the  room, 
and  furnishes  about  accommodation  enough  for  one  rather  small  per- 
son to  sit  and  write  a  note  at.  A  gilt  mirror  finds  a  place  between 
the  windows.  A  sofa  occupies  irrevocably  a  well-defined  space 
against  the  wall,  but  it  is  just  too  short  to  lie  down  on,  and  too  high 
and  slippery  with  its  spring  convex  seat  to  sit  on  with  any  comfort. 
It  is  also  cleverly  managed  that  points  or  knobs  (of  course  ornamen- 
tal and  french-polished)  shall  occur  at  all  those  places  towards  which 
a  wearied  head  would  naturally  tend,  if  leaning  back  to  snatch  a  few 
moment-'  repose  lY'in  fatigue.  There  is  also  a  row  of  black  walnut 
chairs,  with  horse-hair  (!)  seats,  all  ranged  against  r lie  white  wall. 
A  console-table,  too,  under  the  mirror,  with  a  white  marble  top  and 
thin  gilt  brackets.  1  think  there  is  a  piano.  There  is  certainly  a  tri- 
angular stand  for  knickknacks,  china,  &c,  and  this,  with  some  chim- 
ney ornaments, completes  the  furniture,  which  is  all  arranged  accord- 
ing to  stiff,  immutable  law.  The  windows  and  Venetian  blinds  are 
tightly  closed,  the  door  is  tightly  -hut,  and  the  best  room  is  in  c 
quence  always  ready  —  for  what?     For  daily  use?     Oh,  no;  it  is  in 


OF   THE  DWELLING.  263 

every  way  too  good  for  that.  For  weekly  use'?  Not  even  for  that; 
but  for  company  use.  And  thus  the  choice  room,  with  the  pretty  view, 
is  sacrificed  to  keep  up  a  conventional  show  of  finery  which  pleases 
no  one,  and  is  a  great,  though  unacknowledged,  bore  to  the  pro- 
prietors. 

I  am  not  sure  that  we  in  this  country  have  much  right 
to  laugh  at  the  folly  which  maintains  such  chilly  and  com- 
fortless apartments.  Even  so  uninhabited  and  useless  is 
many  a  drawing-room  which  I  could  name  on  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic.  What  an  embodiment  of  all  that  is  stiff, 
repellent,  and  uneasy,  are  the  drawing-rooms  of  most 
widow  ladies  of  limited  means  !  My  space  does  not 
permit  another  extract  from  Mr.  Vaux,  in  which  he 
explains  his  ideal  of  the  way  in  which  a  cottage  parlour 
should  be  arranged  and  furnished.  Very  pleasantly  he 
sketches  an  unpretending  picture,  in  which  snugness  and 
elegance,  the  utile  and  the  dulce,  are  happily  and  inex- 
pensively combined.  But  even  here  Mr.  Vaux  feels 
himself  pulled  up  by  a  vision  of  a  hard-headed  and  close- 
fisted  old  Yankee,  listening  with  indignation,  and  bursting 
out  with  '  This  will  never  do  ! ' 

We  talk  about  houses,  my  friend  ;  we  look  at  houses ; 
but  how  little  the  stranger  knows  of  what  they  are !  Search 
from  cellar  to  garret  some  old  country  house,  in  which 
successive  generations  of  boys  and  girls  have  grown  up, 
but  be  sure  that  the  least  part  of  it  is  that  which  you  can 
see,  and  not  the  most  accurate  inventory  that  ever  was 
drawn  up  by  appraiser  will  include  half  its  belongings. 
There  are  old  memories  crowding  about  every  corner  of 
that  home  unknowm  to  us  :  and  to  minds  and  hearts  far 
away  in  India  and  Australia  everything  about  it  is 
sublimed,  saddened,  transfigured  into  something  different 
from  what  it  is  to  you  and  me.     You  know  for  yourself, 


2G4        MORAL  INFLUENCES   OF   THE  DWELLING. 

my  reader,  whether  there  be  not  something  not  present 
elsewhere  about  the  window  where  you  sat  when  a  child 
and  learned  your  lessons,  the  table  once  surrounded  by 
many  merry  young  faces  which  will  not  surround  it 
again  in  this  world,  the  fireside  where  your  father  sat,  the 
chamber  where  your  sister  died.  Very  little  indeed  can 
sense  do  towards  showing  us  the  Home ;  or  towards 
showing  us  any  scene  which  has  been  associated  with 
human  life  and  feeling  and  embalmed  in  human  mem- 
ories. The  same  few  hundred  yards  along  the  seashore, 
which  are  nothing  to  one  man  but  so  much  ribbed  sea- 
sand  and  so  much  murmuring  water,  may  be  to  another 
something  to  quicken  the  heart's  beating  and  bring  the 
blood  to  the  cheek.  The  same  green  path  through  the 
spring-clad  trees,  with  the  primroses  growing  beneath 
them,  which  lives  in  one  memory  year  after  year  with 
its  fresh  vividness  undiminished,  may  be  in  another 
merely  a  vague  recollection,  recalled  with  difficulty  or 
not  at  all. 

Each  in  his  hidden  sphere  of  joy  or  woe, 
Our  hermit  spirits  dwell  and  range  apart; 

Our  eyes  see  all  around  in  gloom  or  glow, — 
Hues  of  their  own,  fresh  borrowed  from  the  heart. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
CONCERNING  HURRY  AND  LEISURE. 

-§@(H  what  a  blessing  it  is  to  have  time  to 
breathe,  and  think,  and  look  around  one ! 
I  mean,  of  course,  that  all  this  is  a  blessing 
J^  to  the  man  who  has  been  overdriven  :  who 
has  been  living  for  many  days  in  a  breathless  hurry, 
pushing  and  driving  on,  trying  to  get  through  his  work, 
yet  never  seeing  the  end  of  it,  not  knowing  to  what  task 
he  ought  to  turn  first,  so  many  are  pressing  upon  him 
altogether.  Some  folk,  I  am  informed,  like  to  live  in 
a  fever  of  excitement,  and  in  a  ceaseless  crowd  of  occu- 
pations :  but  such  folk  form  the  minority  of  the  race. 
Most  human  beings  will  agree  in  the  assertion  that  it  is  a 
horrible  feeling  to  be  in  a  hurry.  It  wastes  the  tissues 
of  the  body  ;  it  fevers  the  fine  mechanism  of  the  brain  ; 
it  renders  it  impossible  for  one  to  enjoy  the  scenes  of 
nature.  Trees,  fields,  sunsets,  rivers,  breezes,  and  the 
like,  must  all  be  enjoyed  at  leisure,  if  enjoyed  at  all. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  use  in  a  man's  paying  a  hurried 
visit  to  the  country.  He  may  as  well  go  there  blindfold, 
as  go  in  a  hurry.  He  will  never  see  the  country.  He 
will  have  a  perception,  no  doubt,  of  hedgerows  and  grass, 
of  green  lanes  and  silent  cottages,  perhaps  of  great  hills 
and  rocks,  of  various  items  which  go  towards  making 
the  country  ;    but   the  country  itself  he  will  never  see. 


266  CONCERN  IN  G   HURRY 

That  feverish  atmosphere  which  he  carries  with  bam  will 
distort  and  transform  even  individual  objects  ;  but  it  will 
utterly  exclude  the  view  of  the  whole.  A  circling  Lon- 
don fop:  could  not  do  so  more  completely.  For  quiet  is 
the  great  characteristic  and  the  great  charm  of  country 
scenes ;  and  you  cannot  see  or  feel  quiet  when  you  are 
not  quiet  yourself.  A  man  flying  through  this  peaceful 
valley  in  an  express  train  at  the  rate  of  fifty  miles  an 
hour  might  just  as  reasonably  fancy  that  to  us,  its  inhab- 
itants, the  trees  and  hedges  seem  always  dancing,  rush- 
ing, and  circling  about,  as  they  seem  to  him  in  looking 
from  the  window  of  the  flying  carriage;  as  imagine  that, 
when  he  comes  for  a  day  or  two's  visit,  he  sees  these 
landscapes  as  they  are  in  themselves,  and  as  they  look  to 
their  ordinary  inhabitants.  The  quick  pulse  of  London 
keeps  with  him  :  he  cannot,  for  a  long  time,  feel  sensi- 
bly an  influence  so  little  startling,  as  faintly  flavoured, 
as  that  of  our  simple  country  life.  We  have  all  be- 
held some  country  scenes,  pleasing,  but  not  very  strik- 
ing, while  driving  hastily  to  catch  a  train  for  which  we 
feared  we  should  be  late  ;  and  afterwards,  when  we  came 
to  know  them  well,  how  different  they  looked  ! 

T  have  been  in  a  hurry.  I  have  been  tremendously 
busy.  I  have  got  through  an  amazing  amount  of  work 
in  the  last  few  weeks,  as  I  ascertain  by  looking  over  the 
recent  pages  of  my  diary.  You  can  never  be  sure 
whether  you  have  been  working  hard  or  not,  except  by 
consulting  your  diary.  Sometimes  you  have  an  op- 
pressed  and  worn-out  feeling  of  having  been  overdriven, 
of  having  done  a  vast  deal  during  many  days  past  ;  when 
lo !  you  turn  to  the  uncompromising  record,  you  test  the 
accuracy  of  your  feeling  by  that  unimpeachable  stand- 
ard; and  you  find  that,  after  all,  you  have  accomplished 


AND  LEISURE.  267 

very  little.  The  discovery  is  mortifying,  but  it  does  you 
good  ;  and  besides  other  results,  it  enables  you  to  see  bow 
very  idle  and  useless  people,  who  keep  no  diary,  may  easily 
bring  themselves  to  believe  that  they  are  among  the  hard- 
est-wrought of  mortals.  They  know  they  feel  weary; 
they  know  they  have  been  in  a  bustle  and  worry;  they 
think  they  have  been  in  it  much  longer  than  is  the  fact. 
For  it  is  curious  how  readily  we  believe  that  any  strong- 
ly-felt state  of  mind  or  outward  condition  —  strongly  felt 
at  the  present  moment  —  has  been  lasting  for  a  very  long 
lime.  You  have  been  in  very  low  spirits  :  you  fancy  now 
that  you  have  been  so  for  a  great  portion  of  your  life,  or 
at  any  rate  for  weeks  past :  you  turn  to  your  diary,  — 
Xvhy,  eight-and-forty  hours  ago  you  were  as  merry  as  a 
cricket  during  the  pleasant  drive  with  Smith,  or  the 
cheerful  evening  that  you  spent  with  Snarling.  I  can 
well  imagine  that  when  some  heavy  misfortune  befalls  a 
man,  he  soon  begins  to  feel  as  if  it  had  befallen  him  a 
long,  long  time  ago :  he  can  hardly  remember  days 
which  were  not  darkened  by  it :  it  seems  to  have  been 
the  condition  of  his  being  almost  since  his  birth.  And 
so,  if  you  have  been  toiling  very  hard  for  three  days  — 
your  pen  in  your  hand  almost  from  morning  to  night 
perhaps  —  rely  upon  it  that  at  the  end  of  those  days,  save 
for  the  uncompromising  diary  that  keeps  you  right,  you 
would  have  in  your  mind  a  general  impression  that  you 
had  been  labouring  desperately  for  a  very  long  period  — 
for  many  days,  for  several  weeks,  for  a  month  or  two. 
After  heavy  rain  has  fallen  for  four  or  five  days,  all  per- 
sons who  do  not  keep  diaries  invariably  think  that  it  has 
rained  for  a  fortnight.  If  keen  frost  lasts  in  winter  for  a 
fortnight,  all  persons  without  diaries  have  a  vague  be- 
lief that  there  has  been  frost  for  a  month  or  six  weeks. 


268  CONCERNING  HURRY 

You  resolve  to  read  Mr.  Wordy's  valuable  History  of  the 
Entire  Human  Race  throughout  the  tvhole  of  Time  (I  take 
for  granted  you  are  a  young  person)  :  you  go  at  it  every 
evening  for  a  week.  At  the  end  of  that  period  you  have 
a  vague  uneasy  impression,  that  you  have  been  soaked 
in  a  sea  of  platitudes,  or  weighed  down  by  an  incubus  of 
words,  for  about  a  hundred  years.  For  even  such  is  life. 
Every  human  being,  then,  who  is  desirous  of  knowing 
for  certain  whether  he  is  doing  much  work  or  little,  ought 
to  preserve  a  record  of  what  he  does.  And  such  a  rec- 
ord, I  believe,  will  in  most  cases  serve  to  humble  him 
who  keeps  it,  and  to  spur  on  to  more  and  harder  work. 
It  will  seldom  flatter  vanity,  or  encourage  a  tendency 
to  rest  on  the  oars,  as  though  enough  had  been  done. 
You  must  have  laboured  very  hard  and  very  constantly 
indeed,  if  it  looks  much  in  black  and  white.  And  how 
muieh  work  may  be  expressed  by  a  very  few  words  in 
the  diary !  Think  of  Elihu  Burrit's  '  forged  fourteen 
hours,  then  Hebrew  Bible  three  hours.'  Think  of  Sir 
Walter's  short  memorial  of  his  eight  pages  before  break- 
fast, —  and  what  large  and  closely  written  pages  they 
were  !  And  how  much  stretch  of  such  minds  as  they 
have  got  —  how  many  quick  and  laborious  processes  of 
the  mental  machinery  —  are  briefly  embalmed  in  the 
diaries  of  humbler  and  smaller  men,  in  such  entries  as 
'  after  breakfast,  walk  in  garden  with  children  for  ten 
minutes  ;  then  Sermon  on  10  pp. ;  working  hard  from 
10  till  1  i'.M.  ;  then  left  off  with  bad  headache,  and 
very  weary  ? '  The  truth  is,  you  can't  represent  work  by 
any  record  of  it.  As  yet,  there  is  no  way  known  of  pho- 
tographing the  mind's  exertion,  and  thus  preserving  an 
accurate  memorial  of  it.  You  might  as  well  expect  to 
find  in  such  a  general  phase  as  a  stormy  sea  the  delinea- 


AND  LEISURE.  269 

tion  of  the  countless  shapes  and  transformations  of  the 
waves  throughout  several  hours  in  several  miles  of  ocean. 
as  think  to  see  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's  eight  pages  before 
breakfast  an  adequate  representation  of  the  hard,  varied, 
wearinsr-out  work  that  went  to  turn  them  off.  And  so  it 
is,  that  the  diary  which  records  the  work  of  a  very  hard- 
wrought  man,  may  very  likely  appear  to  careless,  unsym- 
pathizing  readers,  to  express  not  such  a  very  laborious 
life  after  all.  Who  has  not  felt  this,  in  reading  the  biog- 
raphy of  that  amiable,  able,  indefatigable,  and  over- 
wrought man,  Dr.  Kitto  ?  He  worked  himself  to  death 
by  labour  at  his  desk :  but  only  the  reader  who  has 
learned  by  personal  experience  to  feel  for  him,  is  likely 
to  see  how  he  did  it. 

But  besides  such  reasons  as  these,  there  are  strong 
arguments  why  every  man  should  keep  a  diary.  I  can- 
not imagine  how  many  reflective  men  do  not.  How  nar- 
row and  small  a  thing  their  actual  life  must  be!  They 
live  merely  in  the  present ;  and  the  present  is  only  a 
shifting  point,  a  constantly  progressing  mathematical  line, 
which  parts  the  future  from  the  past.  If  a  man  keeps 
no  diary,  the  path  crumbles  away  behind  him  as  his  feet 
leave  it ;  and  days  gone  by  are  little  more  than  a  blank, 
broken  by  a  few  distorted  shadows.  His  life  is  all  con- 
fined within  the  limits  of  to-day.  Who  does  not  know 
how  imperfect  a  thing  memory  is  ?  It  not  merely  for- 
gets ;  it  misleads.  Things  in  memory  do  not  merely 
fade  away,  preserving  as  they  fade  their  own  lineaments 
so  long  as  they  can  be  seen :  they  change  their  aspect, 
they  change  their  place,  they  turn  to  something  quite  dif- 
ferent from  the  fact.  In  the  picture  of  the  past,  which 
memory  unaided  by  any  written  record  sets  before  us, 
the    perspective    is    entirely   wrong.     How   capriciously 


270  CONCERNING  HURRY 

some  events  seem  quite  recent,  which  the  diary  shows  are 
really  far  away  ;  and  how  unaccountably  many  things 
look  far  away,  which  in  truth  are  not  left  many  weeks 
behind  us  !  A  man  might  almost  as  well  not  have  lived 
at  all  as  entirely  forget  that  he  has  lived,  and  entirely 
forget  what  he  did  on  those  departed  days.  But  I  think 
that  almost  every  person  would  feel  a  great  interest  in 
looking  back,  day  by  day,  upon  what  he  did  and  thought 
upon  that  day  twelvemonths,  that  day  three  or  five  years. 
The  trouble  of  writing  the  diary  is  very  small.  A  few 
lines,  a  few  words,  written  at  the  time,  suffice,  when  you 
look  at  them,  to  bring  all  (what  Yankees  call)  the  sur- 
roundings of  that  season  before  you.  Many  little  things 
come  up  again  which  you  know  quite  well  you  never 
would  have  thought  of  again  but  for  your  glance  at  those 
words,  and  still  which  you  feel  you  would  be  sorry  to  have 
forgotten.  There  must  be  a  richness  about  the  life  of  a 
person  who  keeps  a  diary,  unknown  to  other  men.  And 
a  million  more  little  links  and  ties  must  bind  him  to  the 
members  of  his  family  circle,  and  to  all  among  whom  he 
lives.  Life,  to  him,  looking  back,  is  not  a  bare  line,  string- 
ing together  his  personal  identity  ;  it  is  surrounded,  inter- 
twined, entangled,  with  thousands  and  thousands  of  slight 
incidents,  which  give  it  beauty,  kindliness,  reality.  Some 
folk's  life  is  like  an  oak  walking-stick,  straight  and  var- 
nished ;  useful,  but  hard  and  bare.  Other  men's  life  (and 
such  may  yours  and  mine,  kindly  reader,  ever  be),  is  like 
that  oak  when  it  was  not  a  stick  but  a  branch,  and  waved, 
leaf-enveloped,  and  with  lots  of  little  twigs  growing  out  of 
it,  upon  the  summer  tree.  And  yet  more  precious  than  the 
power  of  the  diary  to  call  up  again  a  ho.-t  of  little  circuni- 
stances  and  facts,  is  its  power  to  bring  back  the  inde- 
scribable but  keenly-felt  atmosphere  of  those  departed 


AND   LEISURE.  271 

days.     The  old  time  comes  over  you.     It  is  not  merely 
a  collection,  an  aggregate  of  tacts,  that  comes  back ;  it  is 
something  far  more  excellent  than  tliat  :  it  is  the  soul  of 
days  long    ago;  it    is    the    dear  Auld  lang  syne   itself! 
The  perfume   of    hawthorn-hedges    faded  is   there ;  the 
breath  of    breezes    that   fanned  our  gray  hair  when  it 
made  sunny  curls,  often  smoothed  down   by  hands  that 
are  gone ;  the  sunshine  on  the  grass  where  these  old  fin- 
gers  made   daisy   chains ;  and   snatches  of  music,  com- 
pared with  which  anything  you   hear  at  the   Opera  is 
extremely  poor.     Therefore  keep  your  diary,  my  friend. 
Begin  at  ten  years  old,  if  you  have  not  yet  attained  that 
age.     It  will  be  a  curious  link  between  the  altered  sea- 
sons of  your  life  ;  there  will  be  something  very  touching 
about  even  the  changes  which  will  pass  upon  your  hand- 
writing.    You  will  look  back  at  it  occasionally,  and  shed 
several  tears  of  which  you  have  not  the  least  reason  to 
be  ashamed.     No  doubt  when   you  look  back,  you  will 
find  many  very  silly  things  in  it ;  well,  you  did  not  think 
them  silly  at  the  time  ;  and  possibly  you  may  be  humbler, 
wiser,  and  more  sympathetic,  for  the  fact  that  your  diary 
will  convince  you    (if  you  are  a  sensible  person  now), 
that  probably  you  yourself,  a  few  years  or  a  great  many 
years  since,  were  the  greatest  fool  you  ever  knew.     Pos- 
sibly at  some  future  time  you  may  look  back  with  simi- 
lar feelings  on  your  present  self:  so  you  will  see  that  it 
is  very  fit  that  meanwhile  you   should   avoid  self-confi- 
dence  and  cultivate  humility  ;  that  you   should  not  be 
bumptious  in  any  way ;  and  that  you  should  bear,  with 
great  patience  and  kindliness,  the  follies   of  the  young. 
Therefore,  my  reader,  write  up  your  diary  daily.     You 
may  do  so  at  either  of  two  times:   1st.  After  breakfast, 
whenever  you  sit  down  to  your  work,  and  before  you  be- 


272  CONCERNING  HURET 

gin  your  work  ;  2nd.  After  you  have  done  your  indoors 
work,  which  ought  not  to  be  later  than  two  r.M.,  and 
before  you  go  out  to  your  external  duties.  Some  good 
men,  as  Dr.  Arnold,  have  in  addition  to  this  brought  up 
their  history  to  the  present  period  before  retiring  for  the 
night.  This  is  a  good  plan ;  it  preserves  the  record  of 
the  day  as  it  appears  to  us  in  two  different  moods  :  the 
record  is  therefore  more  likely  to  be  a  true  one,  uncol- 
oured  by  any  temporary  mental  state.  Write  down 
briefly  what  you  have  been  doing.  Never  mind  that 
the  events  are  very  little.  Of  course  they  must  be ;  but 
you  remember  what  Pope  said  of  little  things.  State 
what  work  you  did.  Record  the  progress  of  matters  in 
the  garden.  Mention  where  you  took  your  walk,  or 
ride,  or  drive.  State  anything  particular  concerning  the 
horses,  cows,  dogs,  and  pigs.  Preserve  some  memorial 
of  the  progress  of  the  children.  Relate  the  occasions  on 
which  you  made  a  kite  or  a  water-wheel  for  any  of  them  ; 
also  the  stories  you  told  them,  and  the  hymns  you  heard 
them  repeat.  You  may  preserve  some  mention  of  their 
more  remarkable  and  old-fashioned  sayings.  Forsitan  et 
olim  Jubc  meminisse  juvabit :  all  these  things  may  bring 
back  more  plainly  a  little  life  when  it  has  ceased  ;  and 
set  before  you  a  rosy  little  face  and  a  curly  little  head 
when  they  have  mouldered  into  clay.  Or  if  you  go,  as 
you  would  rather  have  it,  before  them,  why,  when  one  of 
your  boys  is  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the  other 
Lord  Chancellor,  they  may  turn  over  the  faded  leaves, 
and  be  the  better  for  reading  those  early  records,  and 
not  impossibly  think  eome  kindly  thoughts  of  their  gover- 
nor who  is  far  away.  Record  when  the  first  snowdrop 
came,  and  the  earliest  primrose.  Of  course  you  will 
mention  the  books   you   read,  and    those  (if  any)  which 


AND  LEISURE.  273 

you  write.  Preserve  some  memorial,  in  short,  of  every- 
thing that  interests  you  and  yours ;  and  look  back  each 
day,  after  you  have  written  the  few  lines  of  your  little 
chronicle,  to  see  what  you  were  about  that  day  the  pre- 
ceding year.  No  one  who  in  this  simple  spirit  keeps  a 
diary,  can  possibly  be  a  bad,  unfeeling,  or  cruel  man. 
No  scapegrace  or  blackguard  could  keep  a  diary  such  as 
that  which  has  been  described.  I  am  not  forgetting  that 
various  blackguards,  and  extremely  dirty  ones,  have  kept 
diaries,  but  they  have  been  diaries  to  match  their  own 
character.  Even  in  reading  Byron's  diary,  you  can  see 
that  he  was  not  so  much  a  very  bad  fellow,  as  a  very 
silly  fellow,  who  thought  it  a  grand  thing  to  be  esteemed 
very  bad.  When,  by  the  way,  will  the  day  come  when 
young  men  will  cease  to  regard  it  as  the  perfection  of 
youthful  humanity  to  be  a  reckless,  swaggering  fellow, 
who  never  knows  how  much  money  he  has  or  spends, 
who  darkly  hints  that  he  has  done  many  wicked 
things  which  he  never  did,  who  makes  it  a  boast  that 
he  never  reads  anything,  and  thus  who  affects  to  be  even 
a  more  ignorant  numskull  than  he  actually  is  ?  When 
will  young  men  cease  to  be  ashamed  of  doing  right, 
and  to  boast  of  doing  wrong  (which  they  never  did)  ? 
'Thank  God,'  said  poor  Milksop  to  me  the  other  day, 
'  although  I  have  done  a  great  many  bad  things,  I  never 
did,  &c.  &c.  &c.'  The  silly  fellow  fancied  that  I  should 
think  a  vast  deal  of  one  who  had  gone  through  so  much, 
and  sown  such  a  large  crop  of  wild  oats.  I  looked  at 
him  with  much  pity.  Ah!  thought  I  to  myself,  there 
are  fellows  who  actually  do  the  things  you  absurdly  pre- 
tend to  have  done  ;  but  if  you  had  been  one  of  those  I 
should  not  have  shaken  hands  with  you  five  minutes 
since.     With  great  difficulty  did  1  refrain  from  patting 

18 


274  CONCERNING  HURRY 

his  empty  head,  and  saying,  '  Oh,  poor  Milksop,  you  are 
a  tremendous  fool ! ' 

It  is  indeed  to  be  admitted  that  by  keeping  a  diary 
yon  are  providing  what  is  quite  sure  in  days  to  come 
to  be  an  occasional  cause  of  sadness.  Probably  it  will 
never  conduce  to  cheerfulness  to  look  back  over  those 
leaves.  Well,  you  will  be  much  the  better  for  being  sad 
occasionally.  There  are  other  things  in  this  life  than 
to  put  things  in  a  ludicrous  light,  and  laugh  at  them. 
That,  too,  is  excellent  in  its  time  and  place  :  but  even 
Douglas  Jerrold  sickened  of  the  forced  fun  of  Punch, 
and  thought  this  world  had  better  ends  than  jesting. 
Don't  let  your  diary  fall  behind :  write  it  up  day  by 
day :  or  you  will  shrink  from  going  back  to  it  and  con- 
tinuing it,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  tells  us  he  did.  You  will 
feel  a  double  unhappiness  in  thinking  you  are  neglecting 
something  you  ought  to  do,  and  in  knowing  that  to 
repair  your  omission  demands  an  exertion  attended  with 
especial  pain  and  sorrow.  Avoid  at  all  events  that 
discomfort  of  diary-keeping,  by  scrupulous  regularity  : 
there  are  others  which  you  cannot  avoid,  if  you  keep 
a  diary  at  all,  and  occasionally  look  back  upon  it.  It 
must  tend  to  make  thoughtful  people  sad,  to  be  reminded 
of  things  concerning  which  we  feel  that  we  cannot  think 
of  them  ;  that  they  have  gone  wrong,  and  cannot  now  be 
set  right ;  that  the  evil  is  irremediable,  and  must  just 
remain,  and  fret  and  worry  whenever  thought  of;  and 
life  go  on  under  that  condition.  It  is  like  making  up 
one's  mind  to  live  on  under  some  incurable  disease,  not 
to  be  alleviated,  not  to  be  remedied,  only  if  possible  to 
be  forgotten.  Ordinary  people  have  all  some  of  these 
things  :  tangles  in  their  life  and  affairs  that  cannot  be 
unravelled   and   must    be    left   alone :    sorrowful  things 


AND  LEISURE.  275 

which  they  think  cannot  be  helped.  I  think  it  highly 
inexpedient  to  give  way  to  such  a  feeling ;  it  ought  to 
be  resisted  as  far  as  it  possibly  can.  The  very  worst 
thing  that  you  can  do  with  a  skeleton  is  to  lock  the 
closet  door  upon  it,  and  try  to  think  no  more  of  it.  No: 
open  the  door :  let  in  air  and  light  :  bring  the  skeleton 
out,  and  sort  it  manfully  up  :  perhaps  it  may  prove  to 
be  only  the  skeleton  of  a  cat,  or  even  no  skeleton  at  all. 
There  is  many  a  house,  and  many  a  family,  in  which 
there  is  a  skeleton,  which  is  made  the  distressing  night- 
mare it  is,  mainly  by  trying  to  ignore  it.  There  is  some 
fretting  disagreement,  some  painful  estrangement,  made 
a  thousand  times  worse  by  ill-judged  endeavours  to  go 
on  just  as  if  it  were  not  there.  If  you  wish  to  get  rid  of 
it,  you  must  recognise  its  existence,  and  treat  it  with 
frankness,  and  seek  manfully  to  set  it  right.  It  is  won- 
derful how  few  evils  are  remediless,  if  you  fairly  face' 
them,  and  honestly  try  to  remove  them.  Therefore,  I 
say  it  earnestly,  don't  lock  your  skeleton-chamber  door. 
If  the  skeleton  be  there,  I  defy  you  to  forget  that  it  is. 
And  even  if  it  could  bring  you  present  quiet,  it  is  no 
healthful  draught,  the  water  of  Lethe.  Drugged  rest 
is  unrefreshful,  and  has  painful  dreams.  And  further  ; 
don't  let  your  diary  turn  to  a  small  skeleton,  as  it  is  sure 
to  do  if  it  has  fallen  much  into  arrear.  There  will  be  a 
peculiar  soreness  in  thinking  that  it  is  in  arrear ;  yet 
you  will  shrink  painfully  from  the  idea  of  taking  to  it 
again  and  bringing  it  up.  Better  to  begin  a  fresh  vol- 
ume. There  is  one  thing  to  be  especially  avoided.  Do 
not  on  any  account,  upon  some  evening  when  you  are 
pensive,  down-hearted,  and  alone,  go  to  the  old  volumes, 
and  turn  over  the  yellow  pages  with  their  faded  ink. 
Never  recur  to  volumes  telling  the  story  of  years  long 


276  CONCERNING  HURRY 

ago,  except  at  very  cheerful  times  in  very  hopeful 
moods :  —  unless,  indeed,  you  desire  to  feel,  as  did  Sir 
Walter,  the  connexion  between  the  clauses  of  the  scrip- 
tural statement,  that  AMthophel  set  his  house  in  order 
and  hanged  himself.  In  that  setting  in  order,  what  old, 
buried  associations  rise  up  again  :  what  sudden  pangs 
shoot  through  the  heart,  what  a  weight  comes  down  upon 
it,  as  we  open  drawers  long  locked,  and  come  upon  the 
relics  of  our  early  selves,  and  schemes  and  hopes  !  "Well, 
your  old  diary,  of  even  five  or  ten  years  since  (espe- 
cially if  you  have  as  yet  hardly  reached  middle  age),  is 
like  a  repertory  in  which  the  essence  of  all  sad  things 
is  preserved.  Bad  as  is  the  drawer  or  the  shelf  which 
holds  the  letters  sent  you  from  home  when  you  were  a 
schoolboy  ;  sharp  as  is  the  sight  of  that  lock  of  hair  of 
your  brother,  whose  grave  is  baked  by  the  suns  of  Ilin- 
dostan  ;  riling  (not  to  say  more)  as  is  the  view  of  that 
faded  ribbon  or  those  withered  flowers  which  you  still 
keep,  though  Jessie  has  long  since  married  Mr.  Beest, 
who  lias  ten  thousand  a-year  :  they  are  not  so  bad,  so 
sharp,  so  riling,  as  is  the  old  diary,  wherein  the  spirit  of 
many  disappointments,  toils,  partings,  and  cares,  is  dis- 
tilled and  preserved.  So  don't  look  too  frequently  into 
your  old  diaries,  or  they  will  make  you  glum.  Don't 
let  them  be  your  usual  reading.  It  is  a  poor  use  of  the 
past,  to  let  its  remembrances  unfit  you  for  the  duties  of 
the  present. 

I  have  been  in  a  hurry,  I  have  said  ;  but  I  am  not  so 
now.  Probably  the  intelligent  reader  of  the  preceding 
pages  may  surmise  as  much.  I  am  enjoying  three  days 
of  delightful  leisure.  I  did  nothing  yesterday  :  I  am 
doing  nothing  to-day :  I  shall  do  nothing  to-morrow. 
This   is  June:   let    me  feel   that  it  is  so.     When  in  a 


AND  LEISURE.  277 

hurry,  you  do  not  realize  that  a  month,  more  especialty  a 
summer  month,  has  come,  till  it  is  gone.     June  :  let  it  be 
repeated :    the  leafy  month   of  June,  to   use  the   strong 
expression  of  Mr.   Coleridge.     Let  me  hear  you  imme- 
diately quote  the  verse,  my  young  lady  reader,  in  which 
that  expression  is  to  be  found.     Of  course  you  can  re- 
peat it.     It   is  now  very  warm,  and  beautifully  bright. 
I  am  sitting  on  a  velvety  lawn,  a  hundred  yards  from  the 
door  of  a  considerable  country  house,  not  my  personal 
property.     Under  the  shadow  of  a  large  sycamore  is  this 
iron  chair ;  and  this  little  table,  on  which  the  paper  looks 
quite  green  from  the  reflection  of  the  leaves.     There  is 
a  very  little   breeze.     Just  a  foot  from  my  hand,  a   twig 
with   very  large  leaves  is   moving  slowly  and   gently  to 
and  fro.     There,  the  great  serrated  leaf  has  brushed  the 
pen.      The    sunshine  is   sleeping    (the  word    is  not   an 
affected  one,  but  simply  expresses  the  phenomenon)  upon 
the  bright  green  grass,  and  upon  the  dense  masses  of 
foliage  which  are  a  little  way  off  on  every  side.     Away 
on  the  left,  there  is    a  well-grown    horse-chestnut  tree, 
blazino-  with  blossoms.     In  the  little  recesses  where  the 
turf  makes  bays  of  verdure  going  into  the  thicket,  the 
crass  is  nearly  as  white  with  daisies  as  if  it  were  covered 
with  snow,  or  had  several  table-cloths  spread  out  upon  it  to 
dry.     Blue  and  green,  I  am  given  to  understand,  form  an 
inconoruous  combination  in  female  dress ;  but  how  beau- 
tiful  the  little  patches  of  sapphire  sky,  seen  through   the 
green  leaves  !     Keats  was  quite  right ;  any  one  who  is 
really  fond  of  nature  must  be  very  far  gone  indeed,  when 
he  or  she,  like  poor  Isabella  with  her  pot  of  basil,  'forgets 
the    blue    above  the  trees.'     I  am    specially  noticing  a 
whole  host  of  little  appearances  and  relations  among  the 
natural  objects  within  view,  which  no  man   in   a   hurry 


278  CONCERNING  HURRY 

would  ever  observe  ;  yet  which  are  certainly  meant  to  be 
observed,  and  worth  observing.     I  don't  mean  to  say  that 
a  beautiful  thing  in   nature  is   lost  because  no    human 
being  sees  it ;  I  have  not  so  vain  an  idea  of  the  impor- 
tance of  our  race.     I  do  not  think  that  that  blue  sky, 
with  its  beautiful  fleecy  clouds,  was  spread  out  there  just 
as  a  scene  at  a  theatre  is  spread  out,  simply  to  be  looked 
at  by  us  ;  and  that  the  intention  of  its  Maker  is  baulked 
if  it  be  not.     Still,  among  a  host  of  other  uses,  which 
we  do  not  know,  it  cannot  be  questioned  that   one  end  of 
the  scenes  of  nature,  and  of  the   capacity  of  noting  and 
enjoying  them  which  is  implanted  in  our  being,  is,  that 
they  should  be  noted  and  enjoyed  by  human  minds   and 
hearts.     It  is  now  11.30  a.m.,  and  I  have  nothing  to   do 
that  need  take  me  far  from   this  spot   till  dinner,  which 
will  be  just  seven  hours  hereafter.     It  requires  an  unin- 
terrupted view  of  at  least  four  or  five  hours  ahead,  to 
give  the  true  sense  of  leisure.     If  you   know  you   have 
some  particular  engagement  in  two  hours,  or  even  three 
or  four,  the  feeling  you  have  is  not  that  of  leisure.     On 
the  contrary  you  feel  that  you  must  push   on   vigorously 
with  whatever  you  may  be  about;  there  is  no  time  to  sit 
down  and  muse.     Two  hours  are  a  very  short  time.     It 
is  to  be  admitted  that  much  less  than  half  of  that  period 
is  very  long,  when  you  are   listening  to   a  sermon  ;  and 
the  man  who  wishes  his  life  to  appear  as  long  as  possible 
can    never  more    effectually   compass    his  end  than   by 
going  very  frequently  to  hear  preachers  of  that  numer- 
ous class  whose  discourses  are  always  sensible  and  in 
good  taste,  and  also  sickeningly  dull  and  tiresome.     Half 
an  hour  under  the  instruction  of  such    good    men    has 
oftentimes  appeared  like  about  four  hours.     But  for  quiet 
folk,  living  in  the  country,  and  who  have  never  held  the 


AND  LEISURE.  2  7 'J 

office  of  attorney-general  or  secretary  of  state,  two  hours 
form  quite  too  short  a  vista  to  pei'mit  of  sitting  down   to 
begin   any  serious  work,  such  as  writing  a  sermon  or  an 
article.     Two  hours  will  not  afford  elbow-room.     One  is 
cramped  in  it.     Give  me  a  clear  prospect  of  five  or  six ; 
so  shall  I  begin  an  essay.     It  is  quite  evident  that  Haz- 
litt  was  a  man  of  the  town,  accustomed  to  live  in  a  hurry, 
and  to  fancy  short  blinks  of  unoccupation  to  be  leisure, — 
even  as  a  man  long  dwelling  in  American  woods  might 
think  a  little  open  glade  quite  an  extensive  clearing.     He 
begins  his  essay  on   Living  to  Ones-self,  by  saying  that 
being  in  the  country  he  has  a  fine  opportunity  of  writing 
on    that    long    contemplated    subject,  and  of  writing   at 
leisure,  because  he  has  three  hours  good  before  him,  not 
to  mention  a  partridge  getting  ready  for  his  supper.     Ah. 
not  enough  !     Very  well  for  the  fast-going  high-pressure 
London  mind  ;  but  quite  insufficient  for   the   deliberate, 
slow-running  country  one,  that  has  to  overcome  a  great 
inertia.     How  many  good  ideas,  or  at  least  ideas  which 
he  thinks  good,  will  occur  to  the  rustic  writer ;  and  be 
cast  aside  when  he  reflects  that  he  has  but  two  hours  to 
sit  at  his  task,  and  that  therefore  he  has  not  a  moment  to 
spare  for  collateral  matters,  but  must  keep  to  the  even 
thread  of  his  story  or  his  argument !     A  man  who   has 
four  miles  to  walk  within  an  hour,  has  little  time  to  stop 
and  look  at  the  view  on    either  hand  ;    and  no  time  at 
all  for  scrambling  over  the  hedge  to  gather  some  wild 
flowers.     But  now  I  rejoice  in  the  feeling  of  an  unlimited 
horizon  before  me,  in  the  regard  of  time.     Various  new 
books    are  lying  on  the  grass ;  and  on  the  top    of  the 
heap,  a  certain  number  of  that  trenchant  and   brilliant 
periodical,  the    Saturday  Review.     This    is    delightful  ! 
It  is  jolly!     And    let    us    always    be  glad,    if  through 


280  CONCERNING  HURRY 

training  or  idiosyncrasy  we  have  come  to  this,  my  reader, 
that  whenever  you  and  1  enjoy  this  tranquil  feeling  of 
content,  there  mingles  with  it  a  deep  sense  of  gratitude. 
I  should  be  very  sorry  to-day,  if  I  did  not  know  Whom  to 
thank  for  all  this.  I  like  the  simple,  natural  piety,  which 
has  given  to  various  seats,  at  the  top  of  various  steep 
hills  in  Scotland,  the  homely  name  of  Rest  and  be  thank- 
ful!  I  trust  I  am  now  doing  both  these  things.  O  ye 
men  who  have  never  been  overworked  and  overdriven, 
never  kept  for  weeks  on  a  constant  strain  and  in  a 
feverish  hurry,  you  don't  know  what  you  miss  !  Sweet 
and  delicious  as  cool  water  is  to  the  man  parched  with 
thirst,  is  leisure  to  the  man  just  extricated  from  breath- 
less hurry  !  And  nauseous  as  is  that  same  water  to  the 
man  whose  thirst  has  been  completely  quenched,  is 
leisure  to  the  man  whose  life  is  nothing  but  leisure. 

Let  me  pick  up  that  number  of  the  Saturday* Review, 
and  turn  to  the  article  which  is  entitled  Smith's  Draff* 
That  article  treats  of  a  certain  essay  which  the  present 
writer  once  contributed  to  a  certain  monthly  magazine ;  f 
and  it  sets  out  the  desultory  fashion  in  which  his  compo- 
sitions wander  about.  I  have  read  the  article  with  great 
amusement  and  pleasure.  In  the  main  it  is  perfectly 
just.  Does  not  the  avowal  say  something  for  the  writer's 
good-humour  ?  Not  frequently  does  the  reviewed  ac- 
knowledge that  he  was  quite  rightly  pitched  into.  Let 
me,  however,  say  to  the  very  clever  and  smart  author  of 
Smith's  Drag,  that  he  is  to  some  extent  mistaken  in  his 
theory  as  to  my  system  of  essay  writing.  It  is  not  en- 
tirely true  that  I  begin  my  essays  with  irrelevant  descrip- 

*.Tune  4th,  1859,  pp.  077-8. 

t  '  Concerning  Man  ami  his  Dwelling-place.'  —  Fraser's  Magazine, 
June,  1859,  pp.  645-661. 


AND   LEISURE.  281 

tions   of  scenery,   horses,  and   the  like,  merely  because 
when  reviewing  a  book  of  heavy  metaphysics,  I  know 
nothing  about  my  subject,  and  care  nothing  about  it,  and 
have  nothing  to  say  about  it  ;  and  so  am  glad  to  get  over 
a  page  or  two  of  my  production  without  bond  fide  going 
at  my  subject.     Such   a  consideration,  no  doubt,  is  not 
without  its  weight  ;  and  besides  this,  holding  that  every 
way  of  discussing  all  things  whatsoever  is  good  except 
the  tiresome,  I  think  that  even  Smith's  Drag  serves  a 
useful  end  if  it  pulls  one  a  little  way  through  a  heavy 
discussion ;  as  the  short  inclined  plane  set  Mr.  Hensom's 
aerial  machine  off  with  a  good  start,  without   which  it 
could  not  fly.     But  there  is  more  than  this  in  the  case. 
The  writer  holds   by  a  grand   principle.     The  writer's 
great  reason  for  saying  something  of  the  scenery  amid 
which  he  is  writing,  is,  that  he  believes  that  it  materially 
affects  the  thought  produced,  and  ought  to  be  taken  in 
connexion  with  it.     You  would  not  give  a  just  idea  of  a 
country  house  by  giving  us  an  architect's  elevation  of  its 
fagade,  and  showing  nothing  of  the  hills  by  which  it  is 
backed,  and  the   trees  and  shrubbery  by  Avhich  it  is  sur- 
rounded.    So,  too,  with  thought.     We  think  in  time  and 
space  :  and  unless  you   are  a  very  great  man,  writing  a 
book   like   Butler's   Analogy,   the   outward   scenes   amid 
which  you  write  will  colour  all  your  abstract  thought. 
Most  people  hate  abstract  thought,     Give  it  in  a  setting 
of  scene  and  circumstances,  and  then  ordinary  folk  will 
accept  it.     Set  a  number  of  essays  in  a  story,  however 
slight  ;  and  hundreds  will  read  them  who  would  never 
have  looked  twice  at  the  bare 'essays.     Human  interest 
and  a  sense  of  reality  are  thus  communicated.     When 
any  one   says   to  me,  '  I  think  thus  and  thus   of  some 
abstract  topic,'  I  like  to  say  to  him,  '  Tell  me  where  you 


282  CONCERNING  HURRY 

thought  it,  how  you  thought  it,  what  you  were  looking  at 
when  you  thought  it,  and  to  whom  you  talked  about  it.' 
I  deny  that  in  essays  what  is  wanted  is  results.  Give 
me  processes.  Show  me  how  the  results  are  arrived  at. 
In  some  cases,  doubtless,  this  is  inexpedient.  You  would 
not  enjoy  your  dinner  if  you  inquired  too  minutely  into 
the  previous  history  of  its  component  elements,  before  it 
appeared  upon  your  table.  You  might  not  care  for  one 
of  Goldsmith's  or  Sheridan's  pleasantries,  if  you  traced 
too  curiously  the  steps  by  which  it  was  licked  into  shape. 
Not  so  with  the  essay.  And  by  exhibiting  the  making 
of  his  essay,  as  well  as  the  essay  itself  when  made,  the 
essayist  is  enabled  to  preserve  and  exhibit  many  thoughts, 
which  he  could  turn  to  no  account  did  he  exhibit  only  his 
conclusions.  It  is  a  grand  idea  to  represent  two  or  three 
friends  as  discussing  a  subject.  For  who  that  has  ever 
written  upon  abstract  subjects,  or  conversed  upon  them, 
but  knows  that  very  often  what  seem  capital  ideas  occur 
to  him,  which  he  has  not  had  time  to  write  down  or  to 
utter  before  he  sees  an  answer  to  them,  before  he  discov- 
ers that  they  are  unsound.  Now,  to  the  essayist  writing 
straightforward  the:-e  Lh.ougb.ts  are  lost;  he  cannot  ex- 
hibit them.  It  will  not  do  to  write  them,  and  then  add 
thai  now  he  sees  they  are  wrong.  Here,  then,  is  the 
great  use  —  one  great  use  —  of  the  Ellesmere  and  Duos- 
ford,  who  shall  hold  friendly  council  with  the  essayist. 
They,  understood  to  be  talking  off-hand,  can  state  all 
these  interesting  and  striking,  though  unsound  views  : 
and  then  the  more  deliberate  Milverton  can  show  that 
they  are  wrong.  And  the  three  friends  combined  do  but 
represent  the  phases  of  thought  and  feeling  in  a  single 
individual :  for  who  does  not  know  that  every  reflective 
man  is,  at  the  very  fewest,  '  three  gentlemen  at  once  ? ' 


AND  LEISURE.  283 

Let  me  say  for  myself,  that  it  seems  to  me  that  no  small 
part  of  the  charm  which  there  is  about  the  Friends  in 
Council  and  the  Companions  of  My  Solitude  arises  from 
the  use  of  the  two  expedients  ;  of  exhibiting  processes  as 
well  as  results,  of  showing  how  views  are  formed  as  well 
as  the  views  themselves  ;  and  also  of  setting  the  whole 
abstract  part  of  the  work  in  a  framework  of  scenes  and 
circumstances.  All  this  makes  one  feel  a  life-like  reality 
in  the  entire  picture  presented,  and  enables  one  to  open 
the  leaves  with  a  home-like  and  friendly  sympathy.  Do 
not  fancy,  my  brilliant  reviewer,  that  I  pretend  to  write 
like  that  thoughtful  and  graceful  author,  so  rich  in  wis- 
dom, in  wit,  in  pathos,  in  kindly  feeling.  All  I  say  is, 
that  I  have  learned  from  him  the  grand  principle,  that 
abstract  thought,  for  ordinary  readers,  must  gain  reality 
and  interest  from  a  setting  of  time  and  place. 

There  is  the  green  branch  of  the  tree,  waving  about. 
The  breeze  is  a  little  stronger,  but  still  the  air  is  perfectly 
warm.  Let  me  be  leisurely  ;  I  feel  a  little  hurried  with 
writing  that  last  paragraph  ;  I  wrote  it  too  quickly.  To 
write  a  paragraph  too  quickly,  putting  in  too  much  pres- 
sure of  steam,  will  materially  accelerate  the  pulse.  That 
is  an  end  greatly  to  be  avoided.  Who  shall  write  hastily 
of  leisure  !  Fancy  Izaak  Walton  going  out  fishing,  and 
constantly  looking  at  his  watch  every  five  minutes,  for 
fear  of  not  catching  the  express  train  in  half  an  hour  !  It 
would  be  indeed  a  grievous  inconsistency.  The  old  gen- 
tleman might  better  have  stayed  at  home. 

It  is  all  very  well  to  be  occasionally,  for  two  or  three 
days,  or  even  for  a  fortnight,  in  a  hurry.  Every  ear- 
nest man,  with  work  to  do,  will  find  that  occasionally 
there  comes  a  pressure  of  it ;    there  comes  a  crowd  of 


284  CONCERNING  HURRY 

things  which  must  be  clone  quickly  if  they  are  done  at 
all  ;  and  the  condition  thus  induced  is  hurry.  I  am 
aware,  of  course,  that  there  is  a  distinction  between 
haste  and  hurry  —  hurry  adding  to  rapidity  the  element 
of  painful  confusion  ;  but  in  the  case  of  ordinary  people, 
haste  generally  implies  hurry.  And  it  will  never  do  to 
become  involved  in  a  mode  of  life  which  implies  a  con- 
stant breathless  pushing  on.  It  must  be  a  horrible 
thing  to  go  through  life  in  a  hurry.  It  is  highly  expe- 
dient for  all,  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  most  men, 
that  they  should  have  occasional  leisure.  Many  enjoy- 
ments —  perhaps  all  the  tranquil  and  enduring  enjoy- 
ments of  life  —  cannot  be  felt  except  in  leisure.  And 
the  best  products  of  the  human  mind  and  heart  can  be 
brought  forth  only  in  leisure.  Little  does  he  know  of 
the  calm,  unexciting,  unwearying,  lasting  satisfaction  of 
life,  who  has  never  known  what  it  is  to  place  the  leis- 
urely hand  in  the  idle  pocket,  and  to  saunter  to  and  fro. 
Mind,  I  utterly  despise  the  idler  —  the  loafer,  as  Yan- 
kees term  him,  who  never  does  anything  —  whose  idle 
hands  are  always  in  his  idle  pockets,  and  who  is  always 
sauntering  to  and  fro.  Leisure,  be  it  remembered,  is 
the  intermission  of  labour;  it  is  the  blink  of  idleness  in 
the  life  of  a  hard-working  man.  It  is  only  in  the  case 
of  such  a  man  that  leisure  is  dignified,  commendable,  or 
enjoyable.  But  to  him  it  is  all  these,  and  more.  Let 
us  not  be  ever  driving  on.  The  machinery,  physical 
and  mental,  will  not  stand  it.  It  is  fit  that  one  should 
occasionally  sit  down  on  a  grassy  bank,  and  look  list- 
lessly, for  a  long  time,  at  the  daisies  around,  and  watch 
tin1  patches  of  bright-blue  sky  through  green  leaves 
overhead.  It  is  right  to  rest  on  a  large  stone  by  the 
margin  of  a  river  ;  to  rest  there  on  a  summer  day  for  a 


AND  LEISURE.  285 

long  time,  and  to  watch  the  lapse  of  the  water  as  it 
passes  away,  and  to  listen  to  its  silvery  ripple  over  the 
pebbles.  Who  but  a  blockhead  will  think  you  idle  ?  Of 
course  blockheads  may;  but  you  and  I,  my  reader,  do 
not  care  a  rush  for  the  opinion  of  blockheads.  It  is  fit 
that  a  man  should  have  time  to  chase  his  little  children 
about  the  green,  to  make  a  kite  and  occasionally  fly  it, 
to  rig  a  ship  and  occasionally  sail  it,  for  the  happiness  of 
those  little  folk.  There  is  nothing  unbecoming  in  mak- 
ing your  Newfoundland  dog  go  into  the  water  to  bring 
out  sticks,  nor  in  teaching  a  lesser  dog  to  stand  on  his 
hinder  legs.  No  doubt  Goldsmith  was  combining  leisure 
with  work  when  Reynolds  one  day  visited  him ;  but  it 
was  leisure  that  aided  the  work.  The  painter  entered 
the  poet's  room  unnoticed.  The  poet  was  seated  at  his 
desk,  with  his  pen  in  his  hand,  and  with  his  paper 
before  him ;  but  he  had  turned  away  from  The  Travel- 
ler, and  with  uplifted  hand  was  looking  towards  a  corner 
of  the  room,  where  a  little  dog  sat  with  difficulty  on  his 
haunches,  with  imploring  eyes.  Reynolds  looked  over 
the  poet's  shoulder,  and  read  a  couplet  whose  ink  was 
still  wet :  — 

By  sports  like  these  are  all  their  cares  beguiled; 
The  sports  of  children  satisfy  the  child. 

Surely,  my  friend,  you  will  never  again  read  that 
couplet,  so  simply  and  felicitously  expressed,  without 
remembering  the  circumstances  in  which  it  was  written. 
Who  should  know  better  than  Goldsmith  what  simple 
pleasures  '  satisfy  the  child  ? ' 

It  is  fit  that  a  busy  man  should  occasionally  be  able 
to  stand  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour  by  the  drag  of  his 
friend   Smith ;  and  walk  round  the  horses,  and  smooth 


286  CONCERNING  HURRY 

down  their  fore-legs,  and  pull  their  ears,  and  drink  in 
their  general  aspect,  and  enjoy  the  rich  colour  of  their 
bay  coats  gleaming  in  the  sunshine ;  and  minutely  and 
critically  inspect  the  drag,  its  painting,  its  cushions,  its 
fur  robes,  its  steps,  its  spokes,  its  silver  caps,  its  lamps, 
its  entire  expression.  These  are  enjoyments  that  last, 
and  that  cannot  be  had  save  in  leisure.  They  are  calm 
and  innocent ;  they  do  not  at  all  quicken  the  pulse,  or 
fever  the  brain  ;  it  is  a  good  sign  of  a  man  if  he  feels 
them  as  enjoyments  :  it  shows  that  he  has  not  indu- 
rated his  moral  palate  by  appliances  highly  spiced  with 
the  cayenne  of  excitement,  all  of  which  border  on  vice, 
and  most  of  which  imply  it. 

Let  it  be  remembered,  in  the  praise  of  leisure,  that 
only  in  leisure  will  the  human  mind  yield  many  of  its 
best  products.      Calm  views,  sound    thoughts,  healthful 
feelings,  do  not  originate  in  a  hurry  or  a  fever.     I  do  not 
forget  the  wild  geniuses  who  wrote,   some  of  the  finest 
English     tragedies  —  men     like    Christopher    Marlowe, 
Ford,  Massinger,  Dekker,  and  Otway.     No  doubt  they 
lived  in  a  whirl  of  wild  excitement,  yet  they  turned  off 
many  fine  and    immortal  thoughts.      But  their  thought 
was  essentially  morbid,  and  their  feeling  hectic :  all  their 
views  of  life  and  things  were  unsound.     And  the  beauty 
with  which  their  writings  are  flushed  all  over,  is  like  the 
beauty  that  dwells  in  the  brow  too  transparent,  the  cheek 
too  rosy,  and  the  eye  too  bright,  of  a  fair  girl  dying  of 
decline.     It  is  entirely  a  hot-house  thing,  and  away  from 
the  bracing  atmosphere  of  reality  and  truth.     Its  sweet- 
ness palls,  its  beauty  frightens ;  its  fierce  passion  and  its 
wild  despair  are  the  things  in  which  it  is  at  home.     I  do 
not  believe  the  stories  which  are  told  about  Jeffrey  scrib- 
bling oflfhis  articles  while  dressing  for  a  ball,  or  after  re- 


AND  LEISURE.  287 

turning  from  one  at  four  in  the  morning :  the  fact  is, 
nothing  good  for  much  was  ever  produced  in  that  jaunty, 
hasty  fashion,  which  is  suggested  by  such  a  phrase  as 
scribbled  off.  Good  ideas  flash  in  a  moment  on  the  mind  : 
but  they  are  very  crude  then;  and  they  must  be  mel- 
lowed and  matured  by  time  and  in  leisure.  It  is  pure 
nonsense  to  say  that  the  Poetry  of  the  Anti-jacobin  was 
produced  by  a  lot  of  young  men  sitting  over  their  wine, 
very  much  excited,  and  talking  very  loud,  and  two  or 
three  at  a  time.  Some  happy  impromptu  hits  may 
have  been  elicited  by  that  mental  friction  ;  but,  rely 
upon  it,  the  Needy  Knife-  Grinder,  and  the  song  whose 
chorus  is  Niversity  of  Gottingen,  were  composed  when 
their  author  was  entirely  alone,  and  had  plenty  of  time 
for  thinking.  Brougham  is  an  exception  to  all  rules :  he 
certainly  did  write  his  Discourse  of  Natural  Theology 
while  rent  asunder  by  all  the  multifarious  engagements 
of  a  Lord  Chancellor;  but,  after  all,  a  great  deal  that 
Brougham  has  done  exhibits  merely  the  smartness  of  a 
sort  of  intellectual  legerdemain  ;  and  that  celebrated 
Discourse,  so  far  as  I  remember  it,  is  remarkably  poor 
stuff.  I  am  now  talking  not  of  great  geniuses,  but  of 
ordinary  men  of  education,  when  I  maintain  that  to  the 
labourer  whose  work  is  mental,  and  especially  to  the  man 
whose  work  it  is  to  write,  leisure  is  a  pure  necessary  of 
intellectual  existence.  There  must  be  long  seasons  of 
quiescence  between  the  occasional  efforts  of  production. 
An  electric  eel  cannot  always  be  giving  off  shocks.  The 
shock  is  powerful,  but  short,  and  then  long  time  is  need- 
ful to  rally  for  another.  A  Held,  however  good  its  soil,  will 
not  grow  wheat  year  after  year.  Such  a  crop  exhausts 
the  soil :  it  is  a  strain  to  produce  it ;  and  after  it  the  field 
must  lie  fallow  for  a  while,  —  it  must  have  leisure,  in 


288  CONCERNING  HURRY 

short.  So  is  it  with  the  mind.  Who  does  not  know  that 
various  literary  electric  eels,  by  repeating  their  shocks 
too  frequently,  have  come  at  last  to  give  off  an  electric 
result  which  is  but  the  faintest  and  washiest  echo  of  the 
thrilling  and  startling  ones  of  earlier  days?  Festus  was 
a  strong  and  unmistakeable  shock  ;  The  Angel  World 
was  much  weaker  ;  The  Mystic  was  extremely  weak  ;  and 
The  Age  was  twaddle.  Why  did  the  author  let  himself 
down  in  such  a  fashion  ?  The  writer  of  Festus  was  a 
grand,  mysterious  image  in  many  youthful  minds  :  dark, 
wonderful,  not  quite  comprehensible.  The  writer  of 
The  Age  is  a  smart  but  silly  little  fellow,  whom  we  could 
readily  slap  upon  the  back  and  tell  him  he  had  rather 
made  a  fool  of  himself.  And  who  does  not  feel  how 
weak  the  successive  shocks  of  Mr.  Thackeray  and  Mr. 
Dickens  are  growing  ?  The  former,  especially,  strikes 
out  nothing  new.  Anything  good  in  his  recent  produc- 
tions is  just  the  old  thing,  with  the  colours  a  good  deal 
washed  out,  and  with  salt  which  has  lost  its  savour.  Poor 
stuff  comes  of  constantly  cutting  and  cropping.  The  po- 
tatoes of  the  mind  grow  small ;  the  intellectual  wheat 
comes  to  have  no  ears;  the  moral  turnips  are  infected 
with  the  finger  and  toe  disease.  The  mind  is  a  reservoir 
which  can  be  emptied  in  a  much  shorter  time  than  it  is 
possible  to  fill  it.  It  tills  through  an  infinity  of  little  tubes, 
many  so  small  as  to  act  by  capillary  attraction.  But  in 
writing  a  book,  or  even  an  article,  it  empties  as  through  a 
twelve-inch  pipe.  It  is  to  me  quite  wonderful  that  most  of 
the  sermons  one  hears  are  so  good  as  they  are,  consider- 
ing the  unintermittent  stream  in  which  most  preachers  are 
compelled  to  produce  them.  I  have  sometimes  thought, 
in  listening  to  the  discourse  of  a  really  thoughtful  and 
able  clergyman  —  If  you,  my  friend,  had  to  write  a  sex- 


AND  LEISURE.  289 

mon   once  a  month   instead  of  once  a  week,   how  very 
admirable  it  would  be  ! 

Some  stupid  people  are  afraid  of  confessing  that  they 
ever  have  leisure.  They  wish  to  palm  off  upon  the 
human  race  the  delusion  that  they,  the  stupid  people, 
are  always  hard  at  work.  They  are  afraid  of  being 
thought  idle  unless  they  maintain  this  fiction.  I  have 
known  clergymen  who  would  not  on  any  account  take 
any  recreation  in  their  own  parishes,  lest  they  should 
be  deemed  lazy.  They  would  not  fish,  they  would  not 
ride,  they  would  not  garden,  they  would  never  be  seen 
leaning  upon  a  gate,  and  far  less  carving  their  name 
upon  a  tree.  What  absurd  folly!  They  might  just  as 
well  have  pretended  that  they  did  without  sleep,  or 
without  food,  as  without  leisure.  You  cannot  always 
drive  the  machine  at  its  full  speed.  I  know,  indeed, 
that  the  machine  may  be  so  driven  for  two  or  three 
years  at  the  beginning  of  a  man's  professional  life  ;  and 
that  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  go  on  for  such  a  period 
with  hardly  any  appreciable  leisure  at  all.  But  it 
knocks  up  the  machine :  it  wears  it  out :  and  after  an 
attack  or  two  of  nervous  fever,  we  learn  what  we  should 
have  known  from  the  beginning,  that  a  far  larger 
amount  of  tangible  work  will  be  accomplished  by  regu- 
lar exertion  of  moderate  degree  and  continuance,  than 
by  going  ahead  in  the  feverish  and  unrestful  fashion  in 
which  really  earnest  men  are  so  ready  to  begin  their 
task.  It  seems,  indeed,  to  be  the  rule  rather  than  the 
exception,  that  clergymen  should  break  down  in  strength 
and  spirits  in  about  three  years  after  entering  the 
church.  Some  die:  but  happily  a  larger  number  get 
well  again,  and  for  the  remainder  of  their  days  work  at 

19 


290  CONCERNING  HURRY 

a  more  reasonable  rate.     As  for  the  sermons  written  in 
that  feverish  stage  of  life,  what  crude  and  extravagant 
things  they  are :  stirring  and  striking,  perhaps,  but  hec- 
tic and  forced,  and  entirely  devoid  of  the  repose,  reality, 
and  daylight  feeling  of  actual   life  and  fact.     ^Tet  how 
many  good,  injudicious  people,  are  ever  ready  to  expect 
of  the  new  curate  or  rector  an  amount  of  work  which 
man  cannot  do  ;  and  to  express  their  disappointment  if 
that  work  is  not  done  !     It  is  so  very  easy  to  map  out  a 
task  which  you  are  not  to  do  yourself:    and  you  feel  so 
little   wearied  by  the  toils  of  other  men  !     As  for  you, 
my  young  friend,  beginning  your  parochial  life,  don't  be 
ill-pleased    with    the    kindly-meant    advice  of  one   who 
speaks  from  the  experience  of  a  good  many  years,  and 
who  has  himself  known  all  that  you  feel,  and  foolishly 
done  all  that  you  are  now  disposed  to  do.     Consider  for 
how  many   hours  of  the  day  you   can  labour,   without 
injury  to  body  or  mind :  labour  faithfully  for  those  hours, 
and  for  no  more.     Never  mind  about  what  may  be  said 
by  Miss   Limejuice  and  Mr.  Snarling.     They  will  find 
fault  at  any  rate  ;    and  you  will  mind  less  about  their 
fault-finding,  if  you  have  an  unimpaired   digestion,  and 
unaffected  lungs,  and  an   unenlarged  heart.     Don't  pre- 
tend that  you  are   always  working  :    it  would  be  a  sin 
against   God   and   Nature  if  you    were.     Say    frankly, 
There  is  a  certain  amount  of  work  that  I  can  do ;  and 
that  I  will  do :  but  I  must  have  my  hours  of  leisure.     I 
must  have  them  for  the  sake  of  my  parishioners  as  well 
as  for  my  own  ;    for  leisure  is  an  essential  part  of  that 
mental  discipline  which   will   enable  my   mind  to  grow 
and  turn  off  sound  instruction  for  their  benefit.     Leisure 
is   a  necessary  part  of  true  life  ;  and  if  I  am  to  live  at 
all,  I  must  have  it.     Surely  it  is  a  thousand  times  better 


AND  LEISURE.  291 


candidly  and  manfully  to  take  up  that  ground,  than  to 
take  recreation  on  the  sly,  as  though  you  were  ashamed 
of  being  found  out  in  it,  and  to  disguise  your  leisure  as 
though  it  were  a  sin.  I  heartily  despise  the  clergyman 
who  reads  Adam  JBede  secretly  in  his  study,  and  when 
anv  one  comes  in,  pops  the  volume  into  his  waste-paper 
basket.  An  innocent  thing  is  wrong  to  you  if  you  think 
it  wrong,  remember.  I  am  sorry  for  the  man  who  is 
quite  ashamed  if  any  one  finds  him  chasing  his  little  chil- 
dren about  the  green  before  his  house,  or  standing  look- 
ing at  a  bank  of  primroses  or  a  bed  of  violets,  or  a  high 
wall  covered  with  ivy.  Don't  give  in  to  that  feeling  for 
one  second.  You  are  doing  right  in  doing  all  that ;  and 
no  one  but  an  ignoi-ant,  stupid,  malicious,  little-minded, 
vulgar,  contemptible  blockhead  will  think  you  are  doing 
wrong.  On  a  sunny  day,  you  are  not  idle  if  you  sit 
down  and  look  for  an  hour  at  the  ivied  wall,  or  at  an 
apple-tree  in  blossom,  or  at  the  river  gliding  by.  You 
are  not  idle  if  you  walk  about  your  garden,  noticing  the 
progress  and  enjoying  the  beauty  and  fragrance  of  each 
individual  rose-tree  on  such  a  charming  June  day  as 
this.  You  are  not  idle  if  you  sit  down  upon  a  garden 
seat,  and  take  your  little  boy  upon  your  knee,  and  talk 
with  him  about  the  many  little  matters  which  give 
interest  to  his  little  life.  You  are  doing  something 
which  may  help  to  establish  a  bond  between  you  closer 
than  that  of  blood  ;  and  the  estranging  interests  of  aft  ex- 
years  may  need  it  all.  And  you  do  not  know,  even  as 
regards  the  work  (if  of  composition)  at  which  you  are 
busy,  what  good  ideas  and  impulses  may  come  of  the 
quiet  time  of  looking  at  the  ivy,  or  the  blossoms,  or  the 
stream,  or  your  child's  sunny  curls.  Such  things  often 
start  thoughts  which  might  seem  a  hundred  miles  away 


292  CONCERNING  HURRY 

from  them.  That  they  do  so,  is  a  fact  to  which  the 
experience  of  numbers  of  busy  and  thoughtful  men  can 
testify.  Various  thick  skulls  may  think  the  statement 
mystical  and  incomprehensible  :  for  the  sake  of  such  let 
me  confirm  it  by  high  authority.  Is  it  not  curious,  by 
the  way,  that  in  talking  to  some  men  and  women,  if  you 
state  a  view  a  little  beyond  their  mark,  you  will  find 
them  doubting  and  disbelieving  it  so  long  as  they  regard 
it  as  resting  upon  your  own  authority  ;  but  if  you  can 
quote  anything  that  sounds  like  it  from  any  printed 
book,  or  even  newspaper,  no  matter  how  little  worthy 
the  author  of  the  article  or  book  may  be,  you  will  find 
the  view  received  with  respect,  if  not  with  credence  ? 
The  mere  fact  of  its  having  been  printed,  gives  any 
opinion  whatsoever  much  weight  with  some  folk.  And 
your  opinion  is  esteemed  as  if  of  greater  value,  if  you 
can  only  show  that  any  human  being  agreed  with  you  in 
entertaining  it.  So,  my  friend,  if  Mr.  Snarling  thinks  it 
a  delusion  that  you  may  gain  some  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  value,  in  the  passive  contemplation  of  nature,  inform 
him  that  the  following  lines  were  written  by  one  Words- 
worth, a  stamp-distributor  in  Cumberland,  regarded  by 
;many  competent  judges  as  a  very  wise  man  :  — 

Why,  William,  on  that  old  grey  stone, 

Thus  for  the  length  of  half  a  day. 
Why,  William,  sit  you  thus  alone, 

And  dream  your  time  away? 

One  morning  thus,  by  Esthwaite  lake, 
When  life  was  sweet,  I  knew  not  why, 

To  me  my  good  friend  Matthew  spake, 
And  thus  1  made  reply: 

The  eye,  —  it  cannot  choose  but  see; 
We  cannot  bid  the  ear  be  still : 


AND  LEISURE.  293 

Our  bodies  feel,  where'er  they  be, 
Against  or  with  our  will. 

Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers, 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress; 

That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours, 
In  a  wise  passiveness. 

Think  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum, 

Of  things  for  ever  speaking, 
That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 

But  we  must  still  be  seeking? 

Then  ask  not  wherefore,  here,  alone, 

Conversing  as  I  may, 
I  sit  upon  this  old  grey  stone, 

And  dream  my  time  away ! 

Such  an  opinion  is  sound  and  just.  Not  that  1  believe 
that  instead  of  sending  a  lad  to  Eton  and  Oxford,  it 
would  be  expedient  to  make  him  sit  down  on  a  grey 
stone,  by  the  side  of  any  lake  or  river,  and  wait  till 
wisdom  came  to  him  through  the  gentle  teaching  of 
nature.  The  instruction  to  be  thus  obtained  must  be 
supplementary  to  a  good  education,  college  and  pro- 
fessional, obtained  in  the  usual  way  ;  and  it  must  be 
sought  in  intervals  of  leisure,  intercalated  in  a  busy  and 
energetic  life.  But  thus  intervening,  and  coming  to  sup- 
plement other  training,  I  believe  it  will  serve  ends  of  the 
most  valuable  kind,  and  elicit  from  the  mind  the  very 
best  material  which  is  there  to  be  elicited.  Some  people 
say  they  work  best  under  pressure  :  De  Quince)',  in  a 
recent  volume,  declares  that  the  conviction  that  he  must 
produce  a  certain  amount  of  writing  in  a  limited  time 
has  often  seemed  to  open  new  cells  in  his  brain,  rich  in 
excellent  thought;  and  I  have  known  preachers  (very 
poor  onesj  declare  that   their  best  sermons  were  written 


294  CONCERNING  HURRY 

after  dinner  on  Saturday.  As  for  the  sermons,  the  best 
were  bad ;  as  for  De  Quincey,  he  is  a  wonderful  man. 
Let  us  have  elbow  room,  say  I,  when  we  have  to  write 
anything  !  Let  there  be  plenty  of  time,  as  well  as  plenty 
of  space.  Who  could  write  if  cramped  up  in  that  cham- 
ber of  torture,  called  Little  Ease,  in  which  a  man  could 
neither  sit,  stand,  nor  lie,  but  in  a  constrained  fashion  ? 
And  just  as  bad  is  it  to  be  cramped  up  into  three  days, 
when  to  stretch  one's  self  demands  at  least  six.  Do  you 
think  Wordsworth  could  have  written  against  time  ?  Or 
that  In  Memoriam  was  penned  in  a  hurry? 

Said  Miss  Limejuice,  I  saw  Mr.  Swetter,  the  new 
rector,  to-day.  Ah  !  she  added,  with  a  malicious  smile, 
I  fear  he  is  growing  idle  already,  though  he  has  not  been 
in  the  parish  six  months.  I  saw  him,  at  a  quarter  before 
two  precisely,  standing  at  his  gate  with  his  hands  in  his 
pockets.  I  observed  that  he  looked  for  three  minutes 
over  the  gate  into  the  clover  field  he  has  got.  And  then 
Smith  drove  up  in  his  drag,  and  stopped  and  got  out ; 
and  he  and  the  rector  entered  into  conversation,  evi- 
dently about  the  horses,  for  I  saw  Mr.  Swetter  walk 
round  them  several  times,  and  rub  down  their  fore-legs. 
Now  /  think  he  should  have  been  busy  writing  his 
sermon,  or  visiting  his  -ick.  Such,  let  me  assure  the 
incredulous  reader,  are  the  words  which  I  have  myself 
beard  Miss  Limejuice,  and  her  mother,  old  Mrs.  Snarl- 
ing Limejuice,  utter  more  than  once  or  twice.  Knowing 
the  rector  well,  and  knowing  how  he  portions  out  his 
day,  let  me  explain  to  those  candid  individuals  the  state 
of  facts.  At  ten  o'clock  precisely,  having  previously 
gone  to  the  stable  and  walked  round  the  garden,  Mr. 
Swetter  sat  down  at    his   desk   in   his  study  and  worked 


AND  LEISURE.  205 

hard  till  one.  At  two  he  is  to  ride  up  the  parish  to  see 
various  sick  persons  among  the  cottagers.  But  from  one 
to  two  he  has  laid  his  work  aside,  and  tried  to  banish  all 
thought  of  his  work.  During  that  period  he  has  been 
running  about  the  green  with  his  little  boy,  and  even 
rolling  upon  the  grass ;  and  he  has  likewise  strung 
together  a  number  of  daisies  on  a  thread,  which  you 
might  have  seen  round  little  Charlie's  neck  if  you  had 
looked  sharply.  He  has  been  unbending  his  mind,  you 
see.  and  enjoying  leisure  after  his  work.  It  is  entirely 
true  that  he  did  look  into  the  clover  field  and  enjoy  the 
fragrance  of  it,  which  you  probably  regard  as  a  piece  of 
sinful  self-indulgence.  And  his  friend  coming  up,  it  is 
likewise  certain  that  he  examined  his  horses  (a  new  pair), 
with  much  interest  and  minuteness.  Let  me  add,  that 
only  contemptible  humbugs  will  think  the  less  of  him  for 
all  this.  The  day-  are  past  in  which  the  ideal  clergyman 
was  an  emaciated  eremite,  who  hardly  knew  a  cow  from 
a  horse,  and  was  quite  incapable  of  sympathizing  with 
his  humbler  parishioners  in  their  little  country  cares. 
And  some  little  knowledge  as  to  horses  and  cows,  not  to 
mention  potatoes  and  turnips,  is  a  most  valuable  attainment 
to  the  country  parson.  If  his  parishioners  find  that  lie  is 
entirely  ignorant  of  those  matters  which  they  understand 
best,  they  will  not  unnaturally  draw  the  conclusion  that 
he  knows  nothing.  While  if  they  find  that  he  is  fairly 
acquainted  with  those  things  which  they  themselves  un- 
derstand, they  will  conclude  that  he  knows  everything. 
Helplessness  and  ignorance  appear  contemptible  to  sim- 
ple folk,  though  the  helplessness  should  appear  in  the 
lack  of  power  to  manage  a  horse,  and  the  ignorance  in  a 
man's  not  knowing  the  way  in  which  potatoes  are  planted. 
To  you.  Mi?s  Limejuice,  let  me  further  say  a  word  as  to 


296  CONCERNING  HURRY 

your  parish  clergyman.  Mr.  Swetter,  you  probably  do 
not  know,  was  Senior  Wrangler  at  Cambridge.  He 
chose  his  present  mode  of  life,  not  merely  because  he 
felt  a  special  leaning  to  the  sacred  profession,  though  he 
did  feel  that  strongly  ;  but  also  because  he  saw  that  in 
the  Church,  and  in  the  care  of  a  quiet  rural  parish,  he 
might  hope  to  combine  the  faithful  discharge  of  his  duty 
with  the  enjoyment  of  leisure  for  thought ;  he  might 
be  of  use  in  his  generation  without  being  engaged  to  that 
degree  that,  like  some  great  barristers,  he  should  grow  a 
stranger  to  his  children.  He  concluded  that  it  is  one 
great  happiness  of  a  country  parson's  life,  that  he  may 
work  hard  without  working  feverishly  ;  he  may  do  his 
duty,  yet  not  bring  on  an  early  paralytic  stroke.  Swetter 
might,  if  he  had  liked,  have  gone  in  for  the  Great  Seal ; 
the  man  who  was  second  to  him  will  probably  get  it;  but 
he  did  not  choose.  Do  you  not  remember  how  Baron 
Alderson,  who  might  well  have  aspired  at  being  a  Chief 
Justice  or  a  Lord  Chancellor,  fairly  decided  that  the  prize 
was  not  worth  the  cost,  and  was  content  to  turn  aside 
from  the  worry  of  the  bar  into  the  comparative  leisure 
of  a  puisne  judgeship  ?  It  was  not  worth  his  while,  he 
rightly  considered,  to  run  the  risk  of  working  himself  to 
death,  or  to  live  for  years  in  a  breathless  hurry.  No 
doubt  the  man  who  thus  judges  must  be  content  to  see 
others  seize  the  great  prizes  of  human  affairs.  Hot  and 
trembling  hands,  for  the  most  part,  grasp  these.  And 
how  many  work  breathlessly,  and  give  up  the  tranquil 
enjoyment  of  life,  yet  never  grasp  them  after  all  ! 

There  is  no  period  at  which  the  feeling  of  leisure  is  a 
more  delightful  one,  than  during  breakfast  and  after 
breakfast  on  a  beautiful  summer  morning  in  the  country. 


AND  LEISURE.  297 

It  is  a  slavish  and  painful  thing  to  know  that  instantly 
you  rise  from  the  breakfast-table  you  roust  take  to  your 
work.     And  in  that  case  your  mind  will  be  fretting  and 
worrying  away  all  the  time  that  the  hurried  meal  lasts. 
But  it  is  delightful  to  be  able  to  breakfast  leisurely  ;  to 
read  over  your  letters  twice  ;  to  skim  the  Times,  just  to 
see  if  there  is  anything  particular  in  it  (the  serious  read- 
ing of  it  being  deferred  till  later  in  the  day)  ;  and  then 
to  go  out  and  saunter  about  the  garden,  taking  an  inter- 
est in  whatever  operations  may  be  going  on  there  ;   to 
walk  down  to  the  little  bridge  and  sit  on  the  parapet, 
and  look  over  at  the  water  foaming  through  below  ;  to 
give  your  dogs  a  swim ;  to  sketch  out  the  rudimentary 
outline  of  a  kite,  to  be  completed  in  the  evening;  to  stick 
up,  amid  shrieks  of  excitement  and  delight,  a  new  col- 
oured picture  in  the  nursery ;  to  go  out  to  the  stable  and 
look  about  there;  —  and  to  do  all  this  with   the   sense 
that  there  is  no  neglect,  that  you  can  easily  overtake  your 
day's  work  notwithstanding.     For  this  end  the  country 
human  being  should  breakfast  early;  not  later  than  nine 
o'clock.     Breakfast  will  be  over  by  half-past  nine  ;  and 
the  half  hour  till  ten  is  as  much  as  it  is  safe  to  give  to 
leisure,  without  running  the  risk  of  dissipating  the  mind 
too  much  for  steady  application  to  work.     After  ten  one 
does  not  feel  comfortable  in  idling  about,  on  a  common 
working-day.     You  feel  that  you  ought   to  be  at  your 
task  ;  and  he  who  would  enjoy  country  leisure  must  be- 
ware of  fretting  the  fine  mechanism  of  his  moral  percep- 
tions by  doing  anything  which  he  thinks  even  in  the  least 
degree  wrong. 

And  here,  after  thinking  of  the  preliminary  half  hour 
of  leisure  before  you  sit  down  to  your  work,  let  me  ad- 
vise that  when  you  fairly  go  at  your  work,  if  of  composi- 


298  CONCERNING  HURRY 

tion,  you  should  go  at  it  leisurely.  I  do  not  mean  that 
you  should  work  with  half  a  will,  with  a  wandering  atten- 
tion, with  a  mind  running  away  upon  something  else. 
"What  I  mean  is,  that  you  should  beware  of  flying  at 
your  task,  and  keeping  at  it,  with  such  a  stretch,  that 
every  fibre  in  your  body  and  your  mind  is  on  the  strain, 
is  tense  and  tightened  up ;  so  that  when  you  stop,  after 
your  two  or  three  hours  at  it,  you  feel  quite  shattered  and 
exhausted.  A  great  many  men,  especially  those  of  a 
nervous  and  sanguine  temperament,  write  at  too  high  a 
pressure.  They  have  a  hundred  and  twenty  pounds  on 
the  square  inch.  Every  nerve  is  like  the  string  of  Robin 
Hood's  bow.  All  this  does  no  good.  It  does  not  appreci- 
ably affect  the  quality  of  the  article  manufactured,  nor 
does  it  much  accelerate  the  rate  of  production.  But  it 
wears  a  man  out  awfully.  It  sucks  him  like  an  orange. 
It  leaves  him  a  discharged  Leyden  jar,  a  torpedo  en- 
tirely used  up.  You  have  got  to  walk  ten  miles.  You 
do  it  at  the  rate  of  four  miles  an  hour.  You  accomplish 
the  distance  in  two  hours  and  a  half;  and  you  come  in, 
not  extremely  done  up.  But  another  day,  with  the  same 
walk  before  you,  you  put  on  extra  steam,  and  walk  at 
four  and  a  half  miles  an  hour,  perhaps  at  five.  {Mem.  : 
People  who  say  they  walk  six  miles  an  hour  are  talking 
nonsense.  It  cannot  be  done,  unless  by  a  trained  pedes- 
trian.) You  are  on  a  painful  stretch  all  the  journey  : 
you  save,  after  all,  a  very  few  minutes  ;  and  you  get  to 
your  journey's  end  entirely  knocked  up.  Like  an  over- 
driven horse,  you  are  off  your  feed  ;  and  you  can  do 
nothing  useful  all  the  evening.  I  am  well  aware  that  the 
good  advice  contained  in  this  paragraph  will  not  have  the 
least  effect  on  those  who  read  it.  Fungar  inani  munere. 
I  know    how  little  all  this  goes  for  with  an    individual 


AND   LEISURE.  299 

now  not  far  away.  And,  indeed,  no  one  can  say  that 
because  two  men  have  produced  the  same  result  in  work 
accomplished,  therefore  they  have  gone  through  the  same 
amount  of  exertion.  Nor  am  I  now  thinking  of  the  vast 
differences  between  men  in  point  of  intellectual  power. 
I  am  content  to  suppose  that  they  shall  be,  intellect- 
ually, precisely  on  a  level :  yet  one  shall  go  at  his  work 
with  a  painful,  heavy  strain ;  and  another  shall  get 
through  his  lightly,  airily,  as  if  it  were  pastime.  One 
shall  leave  off  fresh  and  buoyant ;  the  other,  jaded,  lan- 
guid, aching  all  over.  And  in  this  respect,  it  is  probable 
that  if  your  natural  constitution  is  not  such  as  to  enable 
you  to  work  hard,  yet  leisurely,  there  is  no  use  in  advising 
you  to  take  things  easily.  Ah,  my  poor  friend,  you  can- 
not !  But  at  least  you  may  restrict  yourself  from  going  at 
any  task  on  end,  and  keeping  youi'self  ever  on  the  fret  un- 
til it  is  fairly  finished.  Set  yourself  a  fitting  task  for 
each  day;  and  on  no  account  exceed  it.  There  are  men 
who  have  a  morbid  eagerness  to  get  through  any  work  on 
which  they  are  engaged.  They  would  almost  wish  to  go 
right  on  through  all  the  toils  of  life  and  be  done  with 
them  ;  and  then,  like  Alexander,  '  sit  down  and  rest.' 
The  prospect  of  anything  yet  to  do,  appears  to  render 
the  enjoyment  of  present  repose  impossible.  There  can 
be  no  more  unhealthful  state  of  mind.  The  day  will 
never  come  when  we  shall  have  got  through  our  work : 
and  well  for  us  that  it  never  will.  Why  disturb  the 
quiet  of  to-night,  by  thinking  of  the  toils  of  to-morrow  ? 
There  is  deep  wisdom,  and  accurate  knowledge  of  hu- 
man nature,  in  the  advice,  given  by  the  Soundest  and 
Kindest  of  all  advisers,  and  applicable  in  a  hundred  cases, 
to  '  Take  no  thought  for  the  morrow.' 

It  appears  to  me,  that  in  these  days  of  hurried  life,  a 


300  CONCERNING   HURRY 

great  and  valuable  end  is  served  by  a  class  of  things 
which  all  men  of  late  have  taken  to  abusing,  —  to  wit, 
the  extensive  class  of  dull,  heavy,  uninteresting,  good, 
sensible,  pious  sermons.  They  afford  many  educated  men 
almost  their  only  intervals  of  waking  leisure.  You  are 
in  a  cool,  quiet,  solemn  place :  the  sermon  is  going  for- 
ward :  you  have  a  general  impression  that  you  are  listen- 
ing to  many  good  advices  and  important  doctrines,  and 
the  entire  result  upon  your  mind  is  beneficial ;  and  at  the 
same  time  there  is  nothing  in  the  least  striking  or  start- 
ling to  destroy  the  sense  of  leisure,  or  to  painfully  arouse 
the  attention  and  quicken  the  pulse.  Neither  is  there  a 
syllable  that  can  jar  on  the  most  fastidious  taste.  All 
points  and  corners  of  thought  are  rounded  off.  The  en- 
tire composition  is  in  the  highest  degree  gentlemanly, 
scholarly,  correct ;  but  you  feel  that  it  is  quite  impossible 
to  attend  to  it.  And  you  do  not  attend  to  it ;  but  at  the 
same  time,  you  do  not  quite  turn  your  attention  to  any- 
thing else.  Now,  you  remember  how  a  dying  father, 
once  upon  a  time,  besought  his  prodigal  son  to  spend  an 
hour  daily  in  solitary  thought :  and  what  a  beneficial 
result  followed.  The  dull  sermon  may  serve  an  end  as 
desirable.  In  church  you  are  alone,  in  the  sense  of  being 
isolated  from  all  companions,  or  from  the  possibility  of 
holding  communication  with  anybody ;  and  the  weari- 
some sermon,  if  utterly  useless  otherwise,  is  useful  in 
giving  a  man  time  to  think,  in  circumstances  which  will 
generally  dispose  him  to  think  seriously.  There  is  a 
restful  feeling,  too,  for  which  you  are  the  better.  It  is  a 
fine  thing  to  feel  that  church  is  a  place  where,  if  even  for 
two  hours  only,  you  are  quite  free  from  worldly  business 
and  cares.  You  know  that  all  these  are  waiting  for  you 
outside :  but  at  least  you  are  free  from  their  actual  endur- 


AND  LEISURE.  301 

ance  here.  I  am  persuaded,  and  I  am  happy  to  entertain 
the  persuasion,  that  men  are  often  much  the  better  for 
being  present  during  the  preaching  of  sermons  to  which 
they  pay  very  little  attention.  Only  some  such  belief  as 
this  could  make  one  think,  without  much  sorrow,  of  the 
thousands  of  discourses  which  are  preached  every  Sun- 
day over  Britain,  and  of  the  class  of  ears  and  memories 
to  which  they  are  given.  You  see  that  country  congre- 
gation coming  out  of  that  ivy-covered  church  in  that 
beautiful  churchyard.  Look  at  their  faces,  the  plough- 
men, the  dairy-maids,  the  drain-diggers,  the  stable-boys  : 
what  could  they  do  towards  taking  in  the  gist  of  that  well- 
reasoned,  scholarly,  elegant  piece  of  composition  which 
has  occupied  the  last  half-hour?  Why,  they  could  not 
understand  a  sentence  of  it.  Yet  it  has  done  them  good. 
The  general  effect  is  wholesome.  They  have  got  a  little 
push,  they  have  felt  themselves  floating  on  a  gentle 
current,  going  in  the  right  direction.  Only  enthusiastic 
young  divines  expect  the  mass  of  their  congregation  to 
do  all  they  exhort  them  to  do.  You  must  advise  a  man 
to  do  a  thing  a  hundred  times,  probably,  before  you  can 
get  him  to  do  it  once.  You  know  that  a  breeze,  blowing 
at  thirty-five  miles  an  hour,  does  very  well  if  it  carries  a 
large  ship  along  in  its  own  direction  at  the  rate  of  eight. 
And  even  so,  the  practice  of  your  hearers,  though  truly 
influenced  by  what  you  say  to  them,  lags  tremendously 
behind  the  rate  of  your  preaching.  Be  content,  my 
friend,  if  you  can  maintain  a  movement,  sure  though 
slow,  in  the  right  way.  And  don't  get  angry  with  your 
rural  flock  on  Sundays,  if  you  often  see  on  their  blank 
faces,  while  you  are  preaching,  the  evidence  that  they 
are  not  taking  in  a  word  you  say.  And  don't  be  entirely 
discouraged.     You  may  be  doing  them  good  for  all  that. 


302  CONCERNING  HURRY 

And  if  you  do  good  at  all,  you  know  better  than  to  grum- 
ble, though  you  may  not  be  doing  it  in  the  fashion  that 
you  would  like  best.  I  have  known  men,  accustomed  to 
sit  quiet,  pensive,  half-attentive,  under  the  sermons  of  an 
easy-going  but  orthodox  preacher,  who  felt  quite  indig- 
nant when  they  went  to  a  church  where  their  attention 
was  kept  on  the  stretch  all  the  time  the  sermon  lasted, 
whether  they  would  or  no.  They  felt  that  this  intrusive 
interest  about  the  discourse,  compelling  them  to  attend, 
was  of  the  nature  of  an  assault,  and  of  an  unjustifiable  in- 
fraction of  the  liberty  of  the  subject.  Their  feeling  was, 
'  What  earthly  right  has  that  man  to  make  us  listen  to 
his  sermon,  without  getting  our  consent  ?  We  go  to 
church  to  rest:  and  lo  !  he  compels  us  to  listen  !' 

I  do  not  forget,  musing  in  the  shade  this  beautiful  sum- 
mer day,  that  there  may  be  cases  in  which  leisure  is  very 
much  to  be  avoided.  To  some  men,  constant  occupation 
is  a  thing  that  stands  between  them  and  utter  wretched- 
ness. You  remember  the  poor  man,  whose  story  is  so 
touchingly  told  by  Borrow  in  The  Romany  Rye,  who  lost 
his  wife,  his  children,  all  his  friends,  by  a  rapid  succes- 
sion of  strokes  ;  and  who  declared  that  he  would  have 
gone  mad  if  he  had  not  resolutely  set  himself  to  the  study  of 
the  Chinese  language.  Only  constant  labour  of  mind  could 
4  keep  the  misery  out  of  his  head.'  And  years  afterwards, 
if  he  paused  from  toil  for  even  a  few  hours,  the  misery 
returned.  The  poor  fisherman  in  The  Antiquary  was 
wrong  in  his  philosophy,  when  Mr.  Oldbuck  found  him, 
with  trembling  hands,  trying  to  repair  his  battered  boat 
the  day  after  his  son  was  buried.  '  It's  weel  wi'  you  gen- 
tles,' he  said,  '  that  can  sit  in  the  house  wi'  handkerchers 
at  your  een,  when  ye  lose  a  freend  ;  but  the  like  o'  us 
mauu  to  our  wark  again,  if  our  hearts  were  beating  as 


AND  LEISUEE.  303 

hard  as  my  hammer ! '  We  love  the  kindly  sympathy 
that  made  Sir  Walter  write  the  words  :  but  bitter  as 
may  be  the  effort  with  which  the  poor  man  takes  to  his 
heartless  task  again,  surely  he  will  all  the  sooner  get  over 
his  sorrow.  And  it  is  with  gentles,  who  can  'sit  in  the 
house '  as  long  as  they  like,  that  the  great  grief  longest 
lingers.  There  is  a  wonderful  efficacy  in  enforced  work 
to  tide  one  over  every  sort  of  trial.  I  saw  not  long  since 
a  number  of  pictures,  admirably  sketched,  which  had 
been  sent  to  his  family  in  England  by  an  emigrant  son  in 
Canada,  and  which  represented  scenes  in  daily  life  there 
among  the  remote  settlers.  And  I  was  very  much  struck 
with  the  sad  expression  which  the  faces  of  the  emigrants 
always  wore,  whenever  they  were  represented  in  repose 
or  inaction.  I  felt  sure  that  those  pensive  faces  set  forth 
a  sorrowful  fact.  Lying  on  a  great  bluff,  looking  down 
upon  a  lovely  river ;  or  seated  at  the  tent-door  on  a  Sun- 
day, when  his  task  was  laid  apart  ;  —  however  the  back- 
woodsman was  depicted,  if  not  in  energetic  action,  there 
was  always  a  very  sad  look  upon  the  rough  face.  And 
it  was  a  peculiar  sadness  —  not  like  that  which  human 
beings  would  feel  amid  the  scenes  and  friends  of  their 
youth  :  a  look  pensive,  distant,  full  of  remembrance,  de- 
void of  hope.  You  glanced  at  it,  and  you  thought  of 
Lord  Eglintoun's  truthful  lines  :  — 

From  the  lone  shieling  on  the  misty  island, 
Mountains  divide  us,  and  a  world  of  seas : 

But  still  the  blood  is  strong,  the  heart  is  Highland, 
And  we  in  dreams  behold  the  Hebrides: 

Fair  these  broad  meads,  these  hoary  woods  are  grand, — 

But  we  are  exiles  from  our  fathers'  land ! 

And  you  felt  that  much  leisure   will  not  suit  there. 
Therefore,  you  stout  backwoodsman,  go  at  the  huge  for- 


304  CONCERNING   HURRY 

est-tree :  rain  upon  it  the  blows  of  your  axe,  as  long  as 
you  can  stand  ;  watch  the  fragments  as  they  fly  ;  and 
jump  briskly  out  of  the  way  as  the  reeling  giant  falls:  — 
for  all  this  brisk  exertion  will  stand  between  you  and 
remembrances  that  would  unman  you.  There  is  nothing 
very  philosophical  in  the  plan,  to  '  dance  sad  thoughts 
away,'  which  I  remember  as  the  chorus  of  some  Cana- 
dian song.  I  doubt  whether  that  peculiar  specific  will 
do  much  good.  But  you  may  work  sad  thoughts  away  ; 
you  may  crowd  morbid  feelings  out  of  your  mind  by 
stout  daylight  toils ;  and  remember  that  sad  remem- 
brances, too  long  indulged,  tend  strongly  to  the  maudlin. 
Even  Werter  was  little  better  than  a  fool ;  and  a  con- 
temptible fool  was  Mr.  Augustus  Moddle. 

How  many  of  man's  best  works  take  for  granted  that 
the  majority  of  cultivated  persons,  capable  of  enjoying 
them,  shall  have  leisure  in  which  to  do  so.  The  archi- 
tect, the  artist,  the  landscape-gardener,  the  poet,  spend 
their  pains  in  producing  that  which  can  never  touch  the 
hurried  man.  I  really  feel  that  I  act  unkindly  by  the 
man  who  did  that  elaborate  picking-out  in  the  paint- 
ing of  a  railway  carriage,  if  I  rush  upon  the  platform  at 
the  last  moment,  pitch  in  my  luggage,  sit  down  and  take 
to  the  Times,  without  ever  having  noticed  whether  the 
colour  of  the  carriage  is  brown  or  blue.  There  seems  a 
dumb  pleading  eloquence  about  even  the  accurate  diag- 
onal arrangement  of  the  little  woollen  tufts  in  the  mo- 
rocco cushions,  and  the  interlaced  network  above  one's 
head,  where  umbrellas  go,  as  though  they  said,  '  We  are 
made  thus  neatly  to  be  looked  at,  but  we  cannot  make 
you  look  at  us  unless  you  choose  ;  and  half  the  people 
who    come   into  the  carriage  are  so  hurried  that  they 


AND  LEISUEE.  305 

never  notice  us.'     And  when  I  have  seen  a  fine  church- 
spire,  rich  in  graceful  ornament,  rising  up  by  the  side  of 
a  city  street,  where  hurried  crowds  are  always  passing 
by,  not  one  in  a  thousand  ever  casting  a  glance  at  the 
beautiful  object,  I  have  thought,  Now  surely  you  are  not 
doing  what  your  designer  intended  !     When  he  spent  so 
much  of  time,  and  thought,  and  pains  in  planning  and  exe- 
cuting all  those   beauties  of  detail,  surely  he  intended 
them  to  be  looked  at ;  and  not  merely  looked  at  in  their 
general  effect,  but  followed  and  traced  into  their  lesser 
graces.     But  he  wrongly  fancied  that  men  would  have 
time  for  that ;  he  forgot  that,  except  on  the  solitary  artis- 
tic visitor,  all  he   has  done  would  be  lost,  through  the 
nineteenth  century's  want  of  leisure.     And  you,  architect 
of  Melrose,  when  you  designed  that  exquisite  tracery, 
and  decorated  so  perfectly  that  flying  buttress,  were  you 
content  to  do  so  for  the  pleasure  of  knowing  you  did  your 
work  thoroughly  and  well ;  or  did   you  count  on  its  pro- 
ducing on  the  minds  of  men  in  after  ages  an  impression 
which  a  prevailing  hurry  has  prevented  from  being  pro- 
duced, save  perhaps  in  one  case  in  a  thousand  ?     And 
you,  old  monk,  who  spent  half  your  life  in  writing  and 
illuminating  that  magnificent  Missal ;  was  your  work  its 
own  reward  in  the  pleasure  its  execution  gave  you ;  or 
did  you  actually  fancy  that  mortal  man  would  have  time 
or  patience  —  leisure,  in  short  —  to  examine  in  detail  all 
that  you  have  done,  and  that  interested  you  so  much,  and 
kept  you  eagerly  engaged  for  so  many  hours  together,  on 
days  the  world  has  left  four  hundred  years  behind  ?     I 
declare  it  touches  me  to  look  at  that  laborious  appeal  to 
men  with  countless  hours  to  spare  :  men,  in  short,  hardly 
now  to  be  found  in  Britain.     No  doubt,  all  this  is  the  old 
story :  for  how  great  a  part  of  the  higher  and  finer  hu- 

20 


306  CONCERNING  HURRY  AND  LEISURE. 

man  work  is  done  in  the  hope  that  it  will  produce  an 
effect  which  it  never  will  produce,  and  attract  the  inter- 
est of  those  who  will  never  notice  it !  Still,  the  ancient 
missal-writer  pleased  himself  with  the  thought  of  the  ad- 
miration of  skilled  observers  in  days  to  come  ;  and  so  the 
fancy  served  its  purpose. 

Thus,  at  intervals  through  that  bright  summer  day, 
did  the  writer  muse  at  leisure  in  the  shade  ;  and  note 
down  the  thoughts  (such  as  they  are)  which  you  have 
here  at  length  in  this  essay.  The  sun  was  still  warm 
and  cheerful  when  he  quitted  the  lawn  ;  but  somehow, 
looking  back  upon  that  day,  the  colours  of  the  scene  are 
paler  than  the  fact,  and  the  sunbeams  feel  comparatively 
chill.  For  memory  cannot  bring  back  things  freshly  as 
they  lived,  but  only  their  faded  images.  Faces  in  the 
distant  past  look  wan  ;  voices  sound  thin  and  distant ;  the 
landscape  round  is  uncertain  and  shadowy.  Do  you  not 
feel  somehow,  when  you  look  back  on  ages  forty  centu- 
ries ago,  as  if  people  then  spoke  in  whispers  and  lived  in 
twilight  ? 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES  OF  LIFE,  AND 
HOW  TO  MEET  THEM. 


>  UT  now  to  my  proper  task.  I  have  certain 
suggestions  to  offer  Concerning  the  Worries 
of  Life,  and  How  to  Meet  them.  I  am 
quite  aware  that  the  reader  of  a  meta- 
physical turn,  after  he  has  read  my  essay,  may  be 
disposed  to  find  fault  with  its  title.  The  plan  which  is  to 
be  advocated  for  the  treatment  of  the  Worries  of  Life, 
can  only  in  a  modified  sense  be  described  as  Meeting 
them.  You  cannot  be  said  to  face  a  thing  on  which  you 
turn  your  back.  You  cannot  accurately  be  described  as 
meeting  a  man  whom  you  walk  away  from.  You  do 
not,  in  strictness,  regard  a  thing  in  any  mode  or  fashion, 
which  you  do  not  regard  at  all.  But,  after  intense 
reflection,  I  could  devise  no  title  that  set  out  my  subject 
so  well  as  the  present :  and  so  here  it  is.  Perfection  is 
not  generally  attainable  in  human  doings.  It  is  enough, 
if  things  are  so,  that  they  will  do.  No  doubt  this  is  no 
excuse  for  not  making  them  as  good  as  one  can.  But 
the  fact  is,  as  you  get  older,  you  seldom  have  time  to 
write  down  any  plausible  excuse,  before  you  see  a  crush- 
ing answer  to  it.  The  man  who  has  thought  longest, 
comes  back  to  the  point  at  which  the  man  stands  who  has 
hardly  thought  at  all.     He  feels,  more  deeply  year  by 


308  CONCERNING   THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

year,  the  truth  of  the  grand  axiom,  that  Much  may  be 
said  on  Both  Sides. 

Now,  my  reader,  you  shall  have,  in  a  very  brief  space, 
the  essence  of  my  Theory  as  to  the  treatment  of  Human 
"Worry. 

Let  us  pictui'e  to  ourselves  a  man,  living  in  a  pleasant 
home,  in  the  midst  of  a  beautiful  country.  Pleasing 
scenes  are  all  around  him,  wherever  he  can  look.  There 
are  evergreens  and  grass  :  fields  and  hedgerows :  hills 
and  streams ;  in  the  distance,  the  sea ;  and  somewhat 
nearer,  the  smoke  of  a  little  country  town.  Now,  what 
would  you  think  of  this  man,  if  he  utterly  refused  to 
look  at  the  cheerful  and  beautiful  prospects  which  every- 
where invite  his  eye ;  and  spent  the  whole  day  gazing 
intently  at  the  dunghill,  and  hanging  over  the  pigsty? 
And  all  this  though  his  taste  were  not  so  peculiar  as  to 
lead  him  to  take  any  pleasure  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
pigsty  or  the  dunghill ;  all  this,  though  he  had  a  more 
than  ordinary  dislike  to  contemplate  pigsties  or  dunghills  ? 
No  doubt,  you  would  say  the  man  is  a  monomaniac. 

And  yet,  my  reader,  don't  you  know  (possibly  from 
your  own  experience)  that  in  the  moral  world  many  men 
and  women  do  a  thing  precisely  analogous,  without  ever 
being  suspected  of  insanity  ?  Don't  you  know  that  mul- 
titudes of  human  beings  turn  away  from  the  many  bless- 
ings of  their  lot,  and  dwell  and  brood  upon  its  worries? 
Don't  you  know  that  multitudes  persistently  look  away 
from  the  numerous  pleasant  things  they  might  contem- 
plate, and  look  fixedly  and  almost  constantly  at  painful 
and  disagreeable  things  ?  You  sit  down,  my  friend,  in 
your  snug  library,  beside  the  evening  fire.  The  blast 
without  is  hardly  heard  through  the  drawn  curtains. 
Your  wife  is  there,  and  your  two  grown-up  daughters. 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  309 

You  feel  thankful  that  after  the  bustle  of  the  day,  you 
have  this  quiet  retreat  where  you  may  rest,  and  refit 
yourself  for  another  day  with  its  bustle.  But  the  con- 
versation goes  on.  Nothing  is  talked  of  but  the  fail- 
ings of  the  servants  and  the  idleness  and  impudence  of 
your  boys ;  unless  indeed  it  be  the  supercilious  bow  with 
which  Mrs.  Snooks  that  afternoon  passed  your  wife,  and 
the  fact  that  the  pleasant  dinner-party  at  which  you 
assisted  the  evening  before  at  Mr.  Smith's,  has  been 
ascertained  to  have  been  one  of  a  second-chop  character, 
his  more  honoured  guests  having  dined  on  the  previous 
day.  Every  petty  disagreeable  in  your  lot,  in  short,  is 
brought  out,  turned  ingeniously  in  every  possible  light, 
and  aggravated  and  exaggerated  to  the  highest  degree. 
The  natural  and  necessary  result  follows.  An  hour,  or 
less,  of  this  discipline  brings  all  parties  to  a  sulky  and 
snappish  frame  of  mind.  And  instead  of  the  cheerful 
and  thankful  mood  in  which  you  were  disposed  to  be 
when  you  sat  down,  you  find  that  your  whole  moral  nature 
is  jarred  and  out  of  gear.  And  your  wife,  your  daugh- 
ters, and  yourself,  pass  into  moody,  sullen  silence,  over 
your  books  —  books  which  you  are  not  likely  for  this 
evening  to  much  appreciate  or  enjoy.  Now,  I  put  it  to 
every  sensible  reader,  whether  there  be  not  a  great  deal 
too  much  of  this  kind  of  thing.  Are  there  not  families 
that  never  spend  a  quiet  evening  together,  without 
embittering  it  by  raking  up  every  unpleasant  subject  in 
their  lot  and  history  ?  There  are  folk  who,  both  in  their 
own  case  and  that  of  others,  seem  to  find  a  strange  satis- 
faction in  sticking  the  thorn  in  the  hand  farther  in  :  even 
in  twisting  the  dagger  in  the  heart.  Their  lot  has  its 
innumerable  blessings,  but  they  will  not  look  at  these. 
Let  the  view  around  in  a  hundred  directions  be  ever  so 


310  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

charming,  they  cannot  be  got  to  turn  their  mental  view 
in  one  of  these.  They  persist  in  keeping  nose  and  eyes 
at  the  moral  pigsty. 

Oh,  what  a  blessing  it  would  be  if  we  human  beings 
could  turn  away  our  mind's  eye  at  will,  as  we  can  our 
physical !  As  we  can  turn  away  from  an  ugly  view  in 
the  material  world,  and  look  at  a  pleasing  one ;  if  we 
could  but  do  the  like  in  the  world  of  mind !  As  you 
turn  your  back  on  a  dunghill,  or  a  foul  stagnant  ditch : 
if  you  could  so  turn  your  back  on  your  servants'  errors, 
on  your  children's  faults,  on  the  times  when  you  made  a 
fool  of  yourself,  on  the  occasions  when  sad  disappoint- 
ment came  your  way,  —  in  short,  upon  those  prospects 
which  are  painful  to  look  back  upon!  You  go  to  bed,  I 
may  assume,  every  evening.  How  often,  my  friend, 
have  you  tossed  about  there,  hour  after  hour,  sleepless 
and  fevered,  stung  by  care,  sorrow,  worry  :  as  your  mem- 
ory persisted  in  bringing  up  again  a  thousand  circum- 
stances which  you  could  wish  for  ever  forgot :  as  each 
sad  hour  and  sad  fact  came  up  and  stuck  its  little  sting 
into  your  heart !  I  do  not  suppose  that  you  have  led  a 
specially  wicked  life ;  I  do  not  write  for  blackguards  ;  I 
suppose  your  life  has  been  innocent  on  the  whole,  and 
your  lot  prosperous:  —  I  assume  no  more  than  the  aver- 
age of  petty  vexations,  mortifications,  and  worries.  You 
remember  how  that  noble  man,  Sir  Charles  Napier,  tells 
us  in  his  Diary,  that  sometimes,  when  irritated  by  having 
discovered  some  more  than  usually  infamous  job  or 
neglect,  or  stung  by  a  keener  than  ordinary  sense  of  the 
rascally  injustice  which  pursued  him  through  life,  he 
tossed  about  all  night  in  a  half-frantic  state,  shouting? 
praying,  and  blaspheming.  Now,  whether  you  be  a  great 
man  or  a  little  man,  when  you  lay  your  head  on  your 


AND  HOW   TO  MEET  THEM.  311 

thorny  pillow,  have  you  not  longed  oftentimes  for  the 
power  of  resolutely  turning  the  mind's  eye  in  another 
direction  than  that  which  it  was  so  miserable  a  thing  for 
you  to  contemplate  ?  We  all  know,  of  course,  how  some, 
when  the  mind  grew  into  that  persistent  habit  of  looking 
in  only  one  direction,  of  harbouring  only  one  wretched 
thought,  which  is  of  the  essence  of  madness,  have  thought, 
as  they  could  not  turn  away  the  mind's  eye  at  will,  to  blind- 
fold the  mind  (so  to  speak)  altogether  :  to  make  sure 
that  it  should  see  nothing  at  all.  By  opium,  by  strong 
drink,  men  have  endeavoured  to  reduce  the  mind  to  pure 
stupefaction,  as  their  sole  chance  of  peace.  And  you 
know  too,  kindly  reader,  that  even  such  means  have 
sometimes  failed  of  their  sorrowful  purpose  ;  and  that 
men  have  madly  flung  off  the  burden  of  this  life,  as 
though  thus  they  could  fling  off  the  burden  of  self  and 
of  remembrance. 

I  have  said  that  it  would  be  an  unspeakable  blessing 
if  we  could  as  easily  turn  the  eyes  away  from  a  moral  as 
from  a  physical  pigsty ;  and  in  my  belief  we  may,  to  a 
great  degree,  train  ourselves  to  such  a  habit.  You  see, 
from  what  I  have  just  said,  that  I  do  not  think  the  thing 
is  always  or  entirely  to  be  done.  The  only  way  to  for- 
get a  thing  is  to  cease  to  feel  any  interest  in  it ;  and  we 
cannot  cheat  ourselves  into  the  belief  that  we  feel  no 
interest  in  a  thing  which  we  intensely  desire  to  forget. 
But  though  the.  painful  thing  do  not,  at  our  will,  quite 
die  away  into  nothing,  still  we  may  habituate  ourselves 
to  look  away  from  it.  Only  time  can  make  our  vexations 
and  worries  fade  into  nothing,  though  we  are  looking  at 
them  :  even  as  only  distance  in  space  can  make  the  pig- 
sty disappear,  if  we  retire  from  it  still  looking  in  its 
direction.     But  we  may  turn  our  back  on  the  pigsty,  and 


812  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

so  cease  to  behold  it  though  it  be  close  at  hand.  And  in 
like  manner,  we  may  get  our  mind  so  under  control,  that 
in  ordinary  cases  it  will  answer  the  rein.  We  may 
acquire,  by  long-continued  effort,  the  power  to  turn  our 
back  upon  the  worry  —  that  is,  in  unmetaphoric  lan- 
guage, to  think  of  something  else. 

I  have  often  occasion  to  converse  with  poor  people 
about  their  little  worries,  their  cares  and  trials ;  and 
from  the  ingenious  way  in  which  they  put  them,  so  as  to 
make  them  look  their  very  worst,  it  is  sometimes  easy  to 
see  that  the  poor  man  or  woman  has  been  brooding  for  long 
hours  over  the  painful  thing,  turning  it  in  all  different 
ways,  till  the  thing  has  been  got  into  that  precise  point  of 
view  in  which  it  looks  its  very  ugliest.  It  is  like  one  of 
those  gutta-percha  heads,  squeezed  into  its  most  hideous 
grin.  And  I  have  thought,  how  long  this  poor  soul  must 
have  persisted  in  looking  at  nothing  but  this  dreary  pros- 
pect before  finding  out  so  accurately  the  spot  whence  it 
looks  most  dreary.  I  might  mention  one  or  two  amus- 
ing instances  ;  but  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  fair  to  give 
the  facts,  and  I  could  not  invent  any  parallel  cases  unless 
by  being  myself  painfully  worried.  And  we  all  know 
that,  apart  from  other  reasons,  it  is  impolitic  to  look 
too  long  at  a  disagreeable  object,  for  this  reason  —  that 
all  subjects,  pleasing  or  painful,  greaten  on  our  view  if 
we  look  at  them  long.  They  grow  much  bigger.  You 
can  hardly  write  a  sermon  (writing  it  as  carefully  and 
well  as  you  can)  without  being  persuaded  before  you 
have  done  with  it,  that  the  doctrine  or  duty  you  are 
seeking  to  enforce  is  one  of  the  very  highest  possible 
importance.  You  feel  this  incomparably  more  strongly 
when  you  have  finished  your  discourse  than  you  did  when 
you  began  it.     So    with  an  essay  or    an  article.     Half 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.        313 

in  jest,  you  choose  your  subject ;  half  earnestly,  you 
sketched  out  your  plan ;  but  as  you  carefully  write  it 
out,  it  begins  to  grow  upon  you  that  it  would  be  well  for 
the  human  race  would  it  but  listen  to  your  advice  and 
act  upon  it.  It  is  so  also  with  our  worries,  so  with  all  the 
ills  of  our  lot,  so  especially  with  any  treachery  or  injus- 
tice with  which  we  may  have  been  treated.  You  may 
brood  over  a  little  worry  till,  like  the  prophet's  cloud,  it 
passes  from  being  of  the  size  of  a  man's  hand  into  some- 
thing that  blackens  all  the  sky,  from  the  horizon  to  the 
zenith.  You  may  dwell  upon  the  cruelty  and  treachery 
with  which  you  have  been  used,  till  the  thought  of  them 
stings  you  almost  to  madness.  Who  but  must  feel  for 
the  abandoned  wife,  treated  unquestionably  with  scan- 
dalous barbarity,  who  broods  over  her  wrongs  till  she 
can  think  of  nothing  else,  and  can  hardly  speak  or  write 
without  attacking  her  unworthy  husband  ?  You  may,  in 
a  moral  sense,  look  at  the  pigsty  or  the  open  sewer  till, 
wherever  you  look,  you  shall  see  nothing  save  open  sew- 
ers and  pigsties.  You  may  dwell  so  long  on  your  own 
care  and  sorrow,  that  you  shall  see  only  care  and  sorrow 
everywhere.  Now,  don't  give  in  to  that  if  you  can  help 
it. 

Some  one  has  used  you  ill  —  cheated  you,  misrepre- 
sented you.  An  ugly  old  woman,  partially  deaf,  and  with 
a  remarkably  husky  voice,  has  come  to  your  house  with- 
out any  invitation,  and  notwithstanding  the  most  frigid 
reception  which  civility  will  permit,  persists  in  staying 
for  ten  days.  You  overhear  Mr.  Snarling  informing  a 
stranger  that  your  essays  in  Fraser  are  mainly  character- 
ized by  conceit  and  ill-nature  (Mr.  Snarling,  put  on  the 
cap).  Your  wife  and  you  enter  a  drawing-room  to  make 
a  forenoon  visit.     Miss  Limejuice  is  staying  at  the  house. 


314  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

Your  friend,  Mr.  Smith,  drove   you  down  in  his  drag, 
which  is  a  remarkably  handsome  turn-out.    And  entering 
the  drawing-room  somewhat  faster  than  was   expected, 
you  surprise  Miss  Limejuice,  still  with  a  malignant  grin  on 
her  extraordinarily  ugly  countenance,  telegraphing  across 
the  room  to  the  lady  of  the  house  to  come  and  look  at  the 
carriage.     In  an  instant  the  malignant  grin  is  exchanged 
for  a  fawning  smile,  but  not  so  quickly  but  that  you  saw 
the  malignant  grin.     A  man  has  gone  to  law  with  you 
about   a    point   which    appears    to   you    perfectly   clear. 
Now,  don't  sit  down  and  think  over  and  over  again  these 
petty   provocations.      Exclude    them   from    your   mind. 
Most  of  them  are  really  too  contemptible  to  be  thought 
of.     The  noble  machinery  of  your  mind,  though  you  be 
only  a  commonplace  good-hearted  mortal,  was  made  for 
something  better  than  to  grind  that  wretched  grist.    And 
as  for  greater  injuries,  don't  think  of  them  more  than  you 
can  help.     You  will  make  yourself  miserable.     You  will 
think  the  man  who  cheated  or  misrepresented  you  an  in- 
carnate demon,  while  probably  he  is  in  the  main  not  so 
bad,  though  possessed  of  an  unhappy  disposition  to  tell 
lies  to  the   prejudice  of  his   acquaintance.     Remember 
that  if  you  could  see  his  conduct,  and  your  own  conduct, 
from  his  point  of  view,  you  might  see  that  there  is  much 
to  be  said  even  for  him.     No  matter  how  wrong  a  man 
is,  he  may  be  able  to  persuade  himself  into  the  honest 
belief  that  he  is  in  the  right.     You  may  kill  an  apostle, 
and  think  you  are  doing  God  service.     You  may  vilify  a 
curate,  who  is  more  popular  than  yourself;   and  in  the 
process  of  vilification,  you  may  quote  much  Scripture  and 
shed   many  tears.     Very,  very  few  offenders  see   their 
offence  in  the  precise  light  in  which  you  do  while  you 
condemn  it.     So  resolve  that  in  any  complicated  case,  in 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  315 

which  misapprehension  is  possible  ;  in  all  cases  in  which 
you  cannot  convict  a  man  of  direct  falsehood  ;  you  shall 
give  him  credit  for  honesty  of  intention.  And  as  to  all 
these  petty  offences  which  have  been  named  —  as  to  most 
petty  mortifications  and  disappointments  —  why,  turn 
your  back  on  them.  Turn  away  from  the  contemplation 
of  Mr.  Snarling's  criticism  as  you  would  turn  away  from 
a  little  stagnant  puddle  to  look  at  fairer  sights.  Look  in 
the  opposite  direction  from  all  Miss  Limejuice's  doings 
and  sayings,  as  you  would  look  in  the  opposite  direction 
from  the  sole  untidy  corner  of  the  garden,  where  the  rot- 
ten pea-sticks  are.  As  for  the  graver  sorrow,  try  and 
think  of  it  no  more.  Learn  its  lesson  indeed  ;  God  sent 
it  to  teach  you  something  and  to  train  you  somehow ;  but 
then  try  and  think  of  it  no  more. 

But  there  are  mortals  who  are  always  raking  up 
unpleasant  subjects,  because  they  have  a  real  delight  in 
them.  Like  the  morbid  anatomist,  they  would  rather 
look  at  a  diseased  body  than  a  healthy  one.  Well,  in  the 
case  of  their  own  lot,  let  such  be  indulged.  At  first, 
when  you  find  them  every  time  you  see  them,  beginning 
again  the  tedious  story  of  all  their  discomforts  and  wor- 
ries, you  are  disposed  to  pity  them,  tedious  and  uninter- 
esting though  the  story  of  their  slights  and  grievances 
be.  Do  not  throw  away  pity  upon  such.  They  are  not 
suitable  objects  of  charity.  They  have  a  real  though 
perverted  enjoyment  in  going  over  that  weary  narration. 
It  makes  them  happy  to  tell  at  length  how  miserable  they 
are.  They  would  rather  look  at  the  pigsty  than  not. 
Let  them.  It  is  all  quite  right.  But  unhappily  such 
people,  not  content  themselves  to  contemplate  pigsties, 
generally  are  anxious  to  get  their  acquaintances  to  con- 
template their  pigsties  too ;  and  as  their  acquaintances,  in 


316  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

most  instances,  would  rather  look  at  a  clover-field  than  a 
pigsty,  such  people  become  companions  of  the  most  dis- 
agreeable sort.  As  you  are  sitting  on  a  fine  summer  even- 
ing on  the  grass  before  your  door,  tranquil,  content,  full 
of  thankful  enjoyment,  they  are  fond  (so  to  speak)  of  sud- 
denly bringing  in  a  scavenger's  cart,  and  placing  it  before 
you,  where  it  will  blot  out  all  the  pleasant  prospect. 
They  will  not  let  you  forget  the  silly  thing  you  said  or 
did,  the  painful  passage  in  your  life  on  which  you  wish 
to  shut  down  the  leaf  for  ever.  They  are  always  prob- 
ing the  half-healed  wound,  sticking  the  knife  into  the 
sensitive  place.  If  the  view  in  a  hundred  directions  is 
beautiful,  they  will,  by  instant  affinity  and  necessity  of 
nature,  beg  you  to  look  at  the  dunghill,  and  place  the 
dunghill  before  you  for  that  purpose.  I  believe  there  are 
many  able,  sensitive  men,  who  never  had  a  fair  chance 
in  life.  Their  powers  have  been  crippled,  their  views 
embittered,  their  whole  nature  soured,  by  a  constant  dis- 
cipline of  petty  whips  and  scourges,  and  little  pricking 
needles,  applied  (in  some  cases  through  pure  stolidity 
and  coarseness  of  nature)  by  an  ill-mated  wife.  It  is 
only  by  flying  from  their  own  fireside  that  they  can 
escape  the  unceasing  gadfly,  with  its  petty,  irritating, 
never-ending  sting.  They  live  in  an  atmosphere  of  pig- 
sty. They  cannot  lift  their  eyes  but  some  ugly,  petty, 
contemptible  wrong  is  sure  to  be  crammed  upon  their 
aching  gaze.  And  it  must  be  a  very  sweet  and  noble 
nature  that  years  of  this  training  will  not  embitter.  It 
must  be  a  very  great  mind  that  years  of  this  training  will 
fail  to  render  inconceivably  petty  and  little.  Oh  !  woful 
and  miserable  to  meet  a  man  of  fifty  or  sixty,  an  educated 
man,  who  in  this  world  of  great  interests  and  solemn  an- 
ticipations, can  find  no  subjects  to  talk  of  but  the  neglect 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  317 

of  his  wealth)^  neighbour,  the  extortionate  price  he  is 
charged  for  sugar,  the  carelessness  of  his  man-servant, 
the  flirtations  of  his  maid-servants,  the  stiffness  of  Lord 
Dunderhead  when  he  lately  met  that  empty-pated  peer. 
In  what  a  petty  world  such  a  man  lives  !  Under  what 
a  low  sky  he  walks :  how  muggy  the  atmosphere  he 
breathes ! 

You  remember  Mr.  Croaker,  in  Goldsmith's  Goodna- 
tured  Man.  Whenever  he  saw  a  number  of  people  cheer- 
ful and  happy,  he  always  contrived  to  throw  a  chill  and 
damp  over  the  circle  by  wishing,  with  a  ghastly  air,  that 
they  might  all  be  as  well  that  day  six  months.  I  have 
known  many  Croakers.  I  have  known  men  who,  if  they 
saw  a  young  fellow  quite  happy  in  his  lot  and  his  work, 
hopeful  and  hearty,  would  instantly  try  to  suggest  some- 
thing that  might  make  him  unhappy ;  that  might  pull 
him  down  to  a  congenial  gloom.  I  have  known  persons 
who,  if  they  had  looked  upon  a  gay  circle  of  sweet,  lively 
girls,  rosy  and  smiling,  would  have  enjoyed  extremely  to 
have  (in  a  moral  sense)  suddenly  brought  into  that  fair 
circle  a  hearse  and  a  coffin.  And  I  have  been  filled  with 
fiery  indignation,  when  I  knew  that  such  persons,  really 
acting  from  malignant  spite  and  bitterness  to  see  others 
happy,  would  probably  have  claimed  to  be  acting  from 
religious  motives,  and  doing  a  Christian  duty.  The  very 
foundation,  and  primary  axiom,  in  some  men's  religious 
belief,  ia,  that  Almighty  God  is  spitefully  angry  to  see 
His  creatures  happy.  Oh  what  a  wicked,  mischievous 
lie  !  God  is  love.  And  we  know  it  on  the  highest  of 
all  authorities,  that  the  very  first  and  grandest  duty  He 
claims  of  His  creatures,  is  to  love  Him  with  heart  and 
soul  and  strength  and  mind ;  not  to  shrink  before  Him, 
like  whipped  slaves  before  a  capricious,  sulky  tyrant ;  but 


318  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

to  love  Him  and  trust  to  Him  as  loving  children  might 
gather  at  the  kindest  parent's  knee.    I  am  content  to  look 
at  a  pigsty  when  needful :  God  intends  that  we  should 
oftentimes  look  at  such  in  the  moral   world  ;   but   God 
intends    that  we   should    look    at    clover-fields   and  fra- 
grant flowers  whenever  we  can  do  so  without  a  derelic- 
tion of  duty.     I   am  quite  sure   that  when  the  Blessed 
Redeemer  went  to  the  marriage  at  Cana  of  Galilee,  he 
did  not  think  it  his  duty  to  cast  a  gloom  and  a  damp  over 
the  festive  company  there.     Do  not  misunderstand  me, 
my  spiteful  acquaintance.     There  is  a  time  to  mourn,  as 
well  as  a  time  to  dance  ;  and  in  this  life  we  shall  have 
quite  enough  of  the  former  time,  without  seeking  for  su- 
pererogatory woes.    I  am  not  afraid,  myself,  to  look  upon 
the  recent  grave  ;  I  would  train  my  children  to  sit  upon 
the    daisied   mound,  pensive,  but   not   afraid,  as    I   told 
them  that  Christianity  has  turned  the  sepulchrum  into  the 
Koi/i}iT7/piov,  —  the   burying -place   into   the  sleeping -place  ; 
as  I  told  them  how  the  Christian  dead  do  but  sleep  for 
the  Great  Awaking.     But  I  should  not  think  it  right  to 
break  in  upon   their  innocent  cheer  by  rushing  in  and 
telling  them  that  their  coffin  would  soon  be  coming,  and 
that  their  grave  was  waiting  in  the  churchyard.     There 
are  times  enough  and  events  enough  which  will  tell  them 
that.     Don't  let  us  have  Mr.  Croaker.     And  don't  let  us 
fancy  that  by  making  ourselves  miserable,  we  are  doing 
something  pleasing  to  God.     It  is  not  His  purpose  that 
we  should  look  at  pigsties  when  we  can  honestly  help  it. 
No  doubt,  the  erroneous  belief  that  God  wishes  that  we 
should,  runs  through  all  religions.     India,  Persia,  Ara- 
bia, have  known  it,  no  less  than  Rome,  England,  Scot- 
land ;  the  fakir,  the  eremite,  the  monk,  the  Covenanter, 
have  erred  together  here.     The  Church  of  England,  and 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  319 

the  Church  of  Scotland,  are  no  more  free  from  the  ten- 
dency to  it,  than  the  Church  of  Rome ;  and  the  grim 
Puritan,  who  thought  it  sinful  to  smile,  was  just  as  far 
wrong  as  the  starved  monastic  and  the  fleshless  Brahmin. 
Every  now  and  then,  I  preach  a  sermon  against  this 
notion  ;  not  that  people  now-a-days  will  actually  scourge 
and  starve  themselves  ;  but  that  they  carry  with  them  an 
inveterate  belief  that  it  would  be  a  fine  thing  if  they 
did.  Here  is  the  conclusion  of  the  last  sermon  ;  various 
friendly  readers  of  Fraser  have  sent  me  fancy  specimens 
of  bits  of  my  discourses ;  let  them  compare  their  notion 
of  them  with  the  fact :  — 

It  shows  how  all  men,  everywhere,  have  been  pressed  by  a  com- 
mon sense  of  guilt  against  God,  which  they  thought  to  expiate  by 
self-inflicted  punishment.  But  we,  my  friends,  know  better  than  that. 
Jesus  died  for  us ;  Jesus  suffered  for  us ;  His  sufferings  took  away  our 
sins,  our  own  sufferings,  how  great  soever,  never  could;  Christ's 
sacrifice  was  all-sufficient;  and  any  penance  on  our  part  is  just  as 
needless  as  it  would  be  unavailing.  Take,  then,  brethren,  without  a 
scruple  or  a  misgiving,  the  innocent  enjoyment  of  life.  Let  your 
heart  beat,  gladly  and  thankfully,  by  your  quiet  fireside ;  and  never 
dream  that  there  is  anything  of  sinful  self-indulgence  in  that  pure 
delight  with  which  you  watch  your  children's  sports,  and  hear  their 
prattle.  Look  out  upon  green  spring  fields  and  blossoms,  upon  sum- 
mer woods  and  streams ;  gladden  in  the  bright  sunshine,  as  well  as 
muse  in  the  softening  twilight;  and  never  fancy  that  though  these 
things  cheer  you  amid  the  many  cares  of  life,  you  are  falling  short  of 
the  ideal  sketched  by  that  kindly  Teacher  of  self-denial  who  said,  '  If 
any  man  will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself,  and  take  up  his 
cross  daily ! ' 

Having  relieved  my  feelings  by  thus  stating  my  reso- 
lute protest  against  what  I  think  one  of  the  most  mis- 
chievous and  wicked  errors  I  ever  knew,  I  proceed  to 
say  that  although  I  think  nothing  can  be  more  foolish 
than  to  be  always  looking  at  moral  pigsties,  still  the  prin- 
ciple cannot  be  laid  down  without  some  restriction.     You 


320  CONCEENING  THE  WOEEIES   OF  LIFE, 

may,  by  indulging  the  disposition  to  look  away  from  un- 
pleasant prospects,  bring  your  mind  to  a  morbid  state  : 
you  may  become  so  over-sensitive,  that  you  shall  shrink 
away  from  the  very  thought  of  injustice,  cruelty,  or  suf- 
fering. I  do  not  suppose  selfishness.  I  am  not  talking 
to  selfish,  heartless  persons,  who  can  look  on  with  entire 
composure  at  suffering  of  any  sort,  provided  it  do  not 
touch  themselves.  I  am  quite  content  that  such  should 
endure  all  that  may  befal  them,  and  more.  The  heart  of 
some  men  is  like  an  extremely  tough  beef-steak,  which 
needs  an  immense  deal  of  beating  before  it  will  grow  ten- 
der. The  analogy  does  not  hold  entirely  ;  for  I  believe 
the  very  toughest  steak  may  be  beaten  till  it  grows  ten- 
der ;  or  at  least  the  beating  will  not  make  it  tougher. 
Whereas  the  human  heart  is  such,  that  while  in  generous 
natures  it  learns,  by  suffering,  to  feel  for  the  suffering  of 
others,  in  selfish  and  sordid  natures  it  becomes  only  the 
more  selfish  and  self-contained  the  more  it  is  called  to 
feel.  But  I  am  not  speaking  to  selfish  persons.  I  am 
thinking  of  generous,  sensitive  human  beings,  to  whom 
the  contemplation  of  injustice  and  cruelty  and  falsehood 
is  as  painful  when  these  are  pressing  upon  others,  as 
when  they  are  pressing  upon  themselves.  I  am  thinking 
of  men  and  women  who  feel  their  hearts  quicken  and 
their  cheeks  flush  when  they  read  the  stupid  and  unjust 
verdicts  of  occasional  (must  I  say  frequent?)  juries  ;  and 
the  preposterous  decisions  of  London  police  magistrates 
now  and  then.  To  such,  I  well  believe,  the  daily  read- 
ing of  the  law  report  in  the  Times  is  a  painful  worry  ;  it 
sets  before  one  so  sad  a  picture  of  human  sin  and  folly  ; 
and  it  shows  so  strongly  that  human  laws  labour  most 
vainly  to  redress  the  greater  part  of  the  evils  that  press 
on  human  life.    You  remember  how  once  Byron,  at  Ven- 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.         321 

ice,  durst  not  open  the  Quarterly  Review  ;  and  sent  it 
away  after  it  had  been  several  days  in  his  house,  igno- 
rant even  whether  it  contained  any  notice  of  him.  Of 
course  this  was  a  purely  selfish  shrinking ;  the  poet  knew 
that  his  nature  would  so  wince  under  the  dreaded  attack, 
that  he  was  afraid  even  to  ascertain  whether  there  were 
any  attack  at  all.  Have  not  you,  my  reader,  from  a 
morbid  though  more  generous  sensitiveness,  sometimes 
shrunk  from  opening  the  newspaper  which  day  by  day 
reported  some  iniquitous  court-martial,  some  scandalous 
trial  in  the  Ecclesiastical  Court,  revealing  human  deprav- 
ity in  its  foulest  manifestation,  and  setting  out  and  press- 
ing upon  your  view  evils  which  were  practically  remedi- 
less ?  And  so,  thinking  of  such  things,  I  wish  to  qualify 
my  great  principle,  that  in  the  moral  world  it  is  wise  and 
right  to  turn  your  back  upon  the  pigsty,  where  practicable. 
I  have  thought  of  two  limitations  of  this  principle.  The 
first  limitation  is  this  ;  that  however  painful  it  may  be  to 
look  at  unpleasant  things,  we  ought  fairly  to  face  them 
I  so  long  as  there  is  any  hope  of  remedying  them.  The 
second  limitation  is  this  ;  that  however  painful  it  may  be 
to  look  at  unpleasant  things,  we  ought  not  to  train  our- 
selves, by  constantly  refusing  to  look  at  them,  to  a  mor- 
bidly shrinking  habit  of  mind.  Such  a  habit,  by  indul- 
gence, will  grow  upon  us  to  that  degree,  that  it  will  unfit 
us  for  the  rude  wear  of  life.  And  the  moral  nature, 
grown  sensitive  as  the  mimosa,  will  serve  as  a  conductor 
to  convey  many  a  wretched  and  debilitating  pang  to  the 
heart. 

Let  us  think  of  these  two  limitations  of  my  theory  as 
to  the  fashion  in  which  the  worries  of  life  should  be  met. 

Though  it  is  wise,  generally  speaking,  to  look  away 
from  painful  sights,  it  is  not  wise  or  right  to  do  so  while, 

21 


322  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

by  facing  them,  we  may  hope  to  mend  them.  It  is  not 
good,  like  a  certain  priest  and  Levite  of  ancient  times, 
to  turn  our  back  on  the  poor  man  lying  half  dead  by  the 
way-side  ;  while  it  is  still  possible  for  a  Good  Samaritan 
to  pour  in  oil  and  wine.  However  unpleasing  the  sight, 
however  painful  the  effort,  let  us  look  fairly  at  the  Avorry 
in  our  lot,  till  we  have  done  our  best  to  put  it  right. 
It  is  not  the  act  of  wisdom,  it  is  the  doing  of  indolence, 
selfishness,  and  cowardice,  to  turn  our  back  on  that 
which  we  may  remedy  or  even  alleviate  by  facing  it. 
It  is  only  when  no  good  can  come  of  brooding  over  the 
pigsty  that  I  counsel  the  reader  persistently  to  turn  away 
from  it.  Many  men  try  to  forget  some  family  vexa- 
tion, some  neglected  duty,  some  social  or  political  griev- 
ance, when  they  ought  manfully  to  look  full  at  it,  to  see 
it  in  its  true  dimensions  and  colours,  and  to  try  to  mend 
matters.  They  cannot  truly  forget  the  painful  fact. 
Even  when  it  is  not  distinctly  remembered,  a  vague, 
dull,  unhappy  sense  of  something  amiss  will  go  with 
them  everywhere  —  all  the  more  unhappy  because  con- 
science will  tell  them  they  are  doing  wrong.  It  is  so  in 
small  matters  as  well  as  great.  Your  bookcase  is  all  in 
confusion ;  the  papers  in  your  drawers  have  got  into  a 
sad  mess.  It  is  easier,  you  think,  to  shut  the  doors,  to 
lock  the  drawers,  to  go  away  and  think  of  something 
else,  than  manfully  to  face  the  pigsty  and  sort  it  up. 
Possibly  you  may  do  so.  If  you  are  a  nerveless,  cow- 
ardly being,  you  will ;  but  you  will  not  be  comfortable 
though  you  have  turned  your  back  on  the  pigsty  :  a 
gnawing  consciousness  of  the  pigsty's  existence  will  go 
with  you  wherever  you  go.  Say  your  affairs  have  be- 
come embarrassed ;  you  are  living  beyond  your  means  ; 
you  are  afraid  to  add  up  your  accounts   and   ascertain 


• 


AND  HOW   TO  MEET   THEM.  323 

how  you  stand.     Ah,  my  friend,  many  a  poor  man  well 
knows  the  feeling !     Don't  give   in  to  it.     Fairly  face- 
the  fact :  know  the  worst.     Many  a  starving  widow  and 
orphan,  many  a  pinched  family  reduced  from  opulence 
to  sordid  shifts,  have  suffered  because  the  dead  father 
would  not  while  he  lived  face  the  truth  in  regard  to  his 
means  and  affairs  !     Let  not  that  seltish  being  quote  my 
essay  in  support  of  the  course  he  takes.     However  com- 
plicated and  miserable  the  state  of  the  facts  may  be  — 
though  the  pigsty  should  be  like  the  Augean  stable  — 
look  fairly  at  it ;  see  it  in  its  length  and  breadth ;  cut 
off  your   dinner-parties,   sell  your  horses,  kick   out  the 
fellows  who  make  a  hotel  of  your  house  and  an  ordinary 
of  your  table  ;  bring  your  establishment  to  what  your 
means  can  reach,  to  what  will   leave  enough   to  insure 
your   life.     Don't   let   your  miserable  children  have  to 
think  bitterly  of  you  in  your   grave.     And  another  re- 
spect in  which  you  ought  to  carry  out  the  same  reso- 
lute  purpose   to   look  the  pigsty  full   in   the  face  is,  in 
regard  to  your  religious  views  and  belief.     Don't  turn 
your  back   upon  your  doctrinal   doubts  and  difficulties. 
Go    up    to    them    and    examine    them.       Perhaps    the 
ghastly  object  which  looks  to  you  in  the  twilight  like  a 
sheeted  ghost,  may  prove  to  be  no  more  than  a  table- 
cloth hanging  upon  a  hedge  ;  but  if  you  were  to  pass  it 
distantly  without  ascertaining  what  it  is,  you  might  carry 
the  shuddering  belief  that  you  had  seen  a  disembodied 
spirit  all  your  days.     Some  people  (very  wrongly,  as  I 
think)  would  have  you  turn  the  key  upon  your  sceptical 
difficulties,  and  look  away   from  the  pigsty  altogether. 
From  a  stupid  though  prevalent  delusion  as  to  the  mean- 
ing of   Faith,   they  have  a  vague  impression  that  the 
less   ground   you    have   for  your    belief,  and   the  more 


324  CONCERNING   THE  WORRIES   OF   LIFE, 

objections  you  stoutly  refuse  to  see,  the  more  faith  you 
have  o-ot.      It   is    a   poor  theory,  that  of  some  worthy 
divines  ;  it  amounts  to  just  this  :     Christianity  is  true, 
and  it  is  proved  true  by  evidence  ;  but  for  any  sake  don't 
examine  the  evidence,  for  the  more  you  examine  it  the 
less  likely  you   are  to  believe  it.     I  say,  No !     Let  us 
see  your  difficulties  and  objections  ;  only  to  define  them 
will  cut  them  down  to  half  their  present  vague,  misty 
dimensions.     I  am  not  afraid  of  them  ;  for  though,  after 
all  is  said,  they  continue  to  be  difficulties,  I  shall  show 
you  that  difficulties  a  hundredfold  greater  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  contrary  belief;  and  it  is  just  by  weighing 
opposing  difficulties  that  you  can  in  this  world  come  to 
any  belief,  scientific,  historical,  moral,  political.     Let  me 
say  here  that  I  heartily  despise  the  man  who  professes 
a  vague  scepticism   on   the  strength  of  difficulties  which 
he  has  never  taken  the  pains  fairly  to  measure.     It  is 
hypocritical  pretence  when  a  man  professes  at  the  same 
instant   to  turn   his  back  upon   a   prospect,  and    to   be 
<mided  by  what  he  discerns  in  that  prospect.     But  there 
are  men  who   would  like  to  combine  black  with  white, 
yes  with  no.     There  are  men  who  are  always  anxious 
to  combine  the  contradictory  enterprises,  How  to  do  a 
thing  and  How  at  the  same  time  not  to  do  it. 

In  brief,  my  limitation  is  this:  Do  not  refuse  to 
admit  distressing  thoughts,  if  any  good  is  to  come  of 
admitting  them ;  do  not  turn  your  back  on  the  ugly 
prospect,  so  long  as  there  is  a  hope  of  mending  it ;  don't 
be  like  the  wrecked  sailor,  who  drinks  himself  into  in- 
sensibility, while  a  hope  of  rescue  remains  ;  don't  refuse 
to  worry  yourself  by  thinking  what  is  to  become  of  your 
children  after  you  are  gone,  if  there  be  still  time  to 
devise  some  means  of  providing  for  them.     Look  fairly 


AND  HOW   TO  MEET   THEM.  325 

at  the  blackest  view,  and  go  at  it  bravely  if  there  be  the 
faintest  chance  of  making  it  brighter. 

And,  in  truth,  a  great  many  bad  things  prove  to  be 
not  so  bad  when  you  fairly  look  at  them.  The  day 
seems  horribly  rainy  and  stormy  when  you  look  out  of 
your  library-window  ;  but  you  wrap  up  and  go  out  reso- 
lutely for  a  walk,  and  the  day  is  not  so  bad.  By  the 
time  your  brisk  five  miles  are  finished,  you  think  it 
rather  a  fine  breezy  day,  healthful  though  boisterous. 
All  remediable  evils  are  made  a  great  deal  worse  by 
turning  your  back  on  them.  The  skeleton  in  the  closet 
rattles  its  bare  bones  abominably,  when  you  lock  the 
closet-door.  Your  disorderly  drawer  of  letters  and  papers 
was  a  bugbear  for  weeks,  because  you  put  off"  sorting  it 
and  tried  to  forget  it.  It  made  you  unhappy  —  vaguely 
uneasy,  as  all  neglected  duties  do  ;  yet  you  thought  the 
trouble  of  putting  it  right  would  be  so  great  that  you  would 
rather  bear  the  little  gnawing  uneasiness.  At  length 
you  could  stand  it  no  more.  You  determined  some  day 
to  go  at  your  task  and  do  it.  You  did  it.  It  was  done 
speedily  ;  it  was  done  easily.  You  felt  a  blessed  sense 
of  relief,  and  you  wondered  that  you  had  made  such  a 
painful  worry  of  a  thing  so  simple.  By  the  make  of 
the  universe  every  duty  deferred  grows  in  bulk  and 
weight  and  painful  pressure. 

It  may  here  be  said  that  when  a  worry  cannot  be 
forgotten,  and  yet  cannot  be  mended,  it  is  a  good  thing 
to  try  to  define  it.  Measure  its  exact  size.  That  is 
sure  to  make  it  look  smaller.  I  have  great  confidence 
in  the  power  of  the  pen  to  give  most  people  clearer 
ideas  than  they  would  have  without  it.  You  have  a 
vague  sense  that  in  your  lot  there  is  a  vast  number  of 
worries  and  annoyances.     Just  sit  down,  take  a  large 


326  CONCERNING  THE  WOEBIES   OF  LIFE, 

sheet  of  paper  and  a  pen,  and  write  out  a  list  of  all 
your  annoyances  and  worries.  You  will  be  surprised 
to  find  how  few  they  are,  and  how  small  they  look. 
And  if  on  another  sheet  of  paper  you  make  a  list  of 
all  the  blessings  you  enjoy,  I  believe  that  in  most 
cases  you  will  see  reason  to  feel  heartily  ashamed 
of  your  previous  state  of  discontent.  Even  should  the 
catalogue  of  worries  not  be  a  brief  one,  still  the  killing 
thins:  —  the  vague  sense  of  indefinite  magnitude  and 
number  —  will  be  gone.  Almost  all  numbers  diminish 
by  accurately  counting  them.  A  clergyman  may  hon- 
estly believe  that  there  are  five  hundred  people  in  his 
church ;  but  unless  he  be  a  person  accustomed  accu- 
rately to  estimate  numbers,  you  will  find  on  counting 
that  his  congregation  does  not  exceed  two  hundred  and 
fifty.  When  the  Chartist  petition  was  presented  to  Par- 
liament some  years  ago,  it  was  said  to  bear  the  signa- 
tures of  five  or  six  millions  of  people.  It  looked  such 
an  immense  mass  that  possibly  its  promoters  were  hon- 
est in  promulgating  that  belief.  But  the  names  were 
counted,  and  they  amounted  to  no  more  than  a  million 
and  a  half.  So,  thoughtful  reader,  who  fancy  yourself 
torn  by  a  howling  pack  of  worries,  count  them.  You 
will  find  them  much  fewer  than  you  had  thought ;  and 
the  only  way  to  satisfactorily  count  them  is  by  making  a 
list  of  them  in  writing. 

Yet  here  there  is  a  difficulty  too.  The  purpose  for 
which  I  advise  you  to  make  such  a  list,  is  to  assure 
yourself  that  your  worries  are  really  not  so  very  many 
or  so  very  great.  But  there  is  hardly  any  means  in  tins 
■world  which  may  not  be  worked  to  the  opposite  of  the 
contemplated  end.  And  by  writing  out  and  dwelling  on 
the  list  of  your   worries,   you   may  make  them  worse. 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  327 

You  may  diminish  their  number,  but  increase  their  in- 
tensity. You  may  set  out  the  relations  and  tendencies 
of  the  vexations  under  which  you  suffer,  of  the  ill  usage 
of  which  you  complain,  till  you  whip  yourself  up  to  a 
point  of  violent  indignation.  In  reading  the  life  of  Sir 
Charles  Napier,  I  think  one  often  sees  cause  to  lament 
that  the  great  man  so  chronicled  and  dwelt  upon  the 
petty  injustices  which  he  met  with  from  petty  men. 
And  when  a  poor  governess  writes  the  story  of  her  in- 
dignities, recording  them  with  painful  accuracy,  and  put- 
ting them  in  the  most  unpleasing  light,  one  feels  that  it 
would  have  been  better  had  she  not  taken  up  the  pen. 
But  indeed  these  are  instances  coming  under  the  gen- 
eral principle  set  out  some  time  since,  that  irremediable 
worries  are  for  the  most  part  better  forgotten. 

So  much  for  the  first  limitation  of  my  theory  for  the 
treatment  of  worries.  The  second,  you  remember,  is, 
that  we  ought  not  to  give  in  to  the  impulse  to  turn  our 
back  upon  the  ugly  prospect  to  such  a  degree  that  any 
painful  sight  or  thought  shall  be  felt  like  a  mortal  stab. 
You  may  come  to  that  point  of  morbid  sensitiveness. 
And  I  believe  that  the  greatest  evil  of  an  extremely 
retired  counh-y  life  is,  that  it  tends  to  bring  one  to  that 
painfully  shrinking  state.  You  may  be  afraid  to  read 
the  Times,  for  the  suffering  caused  you  by  the  contem- 
plation of  the  irremediable  sin  and  misery  of  which  you 
read  the  daily  record  there.  You  may  come  to  wish 
that  you  could  creep  away  into  some  quiet  corner,  where 
the  uproar  of  human  guilt  and  wretchedness  should 
never  be  heard  again.  You  may  come  to  sympathize 
heartily  with  the  weary  aspiration  of  the  Psalmist,  '  Oh 
that  I  had  wings  like  a  dove  :  then  would  I  flee  away 
and  be  at  rest ! '     Sometimes  as  you  stand  in  your  sta- 


328  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

ble,  smoothing  down  your  horse's  neck,  you  may  think 
how  quiet  and  silent  a  place  it  is,  how  free  from  worry, 
and  wish  you  had  never  to  go  out  of  the  stall.  Or  when 
you  have  been  for  two  or  three  days  ill  in  bed,  the  days 
going  on  and  going  down  so  strangely,  you  may  have 
thought  that  you  would  stay  there  for  the  remainder  of 
your  life  ;  that  you  could  not  muster  resolution  to  set 
yourself  again  to  the  daily  worry.  You  people  who  can- 
not understand  the  state  of  feeling  which  I  am  trying  to 
describe,  be  thankful  for  it :  but  do  not  doubt  that  such 
a  state  of  feeling  exists  in  many  minds. 

Let  me  confess,  for  myself,  that  for  several  years  past 
I  have  been  afraid  to  read  a  good  novel.  It  is  intensely 
painful  to  contemplate  and  realize  to  one's  mind  the 
state  of  matters  set  out  in  most  writings  of  the  class. 
Apart  from  the  question  of  not  caring  for  that  order  of 
thought  (and  to  me  dissertation  is  much  more  interesting 
than  narrative),  don't  you  shrink  from  the  sight  of  strug- 
gling virtue  and  triumphant  vice,  of  cruelty,  oppression, 
and  successful  falsehood?  Give  us  the  story  that  has 
no  exciting  action  ;  that  moves  along  without  incident 
transcending  the  experience  of  ordinary  human  beings ; 
that  shows  us  quiet,  simple,  innocent  modes  of  life, 
free  from  the  intrusion  of  the  stormy  and  wicked  world 
around.  Don't  you  begin,  as  you  grow  older,  to  sympa- 
thize with  that  feeling  of  the  poet  Beattie,  which  when 
younger  you  laughed  at,  that  Shakspeare's  admixture  of 
the  Grotesque  in  his  serious  plays  was  absolutely  necessary 
to  prevent  the  tragic  part  from  producing  an  effect  too 
painful  for  endurance  ?  The  poet  maintained  that  Shak- 
speare  was  aiming  to  save  those  who  might  witness  his 
plays  from  a  'disordered  head  or  a  broken  heart.'  You 
see  there,  doubtless,  the  working  of  a  morbid  nervous 


s  AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  329 

system  ;  but  there  is  a  substratum  of  truth.  Once  upon 
a  time,  when  a  man  was  worried  by  the  evils  of  his  lot, 
he  could  hope  to  escape  from  them  by  getting  into  the 
world  of  fiction.  But  now  much  fiction  is  such  that 
you  are  worse  there  than  ever.  I  do  not  think  of  the 
grand,  romantic,  and  tremendously  melodramatic  inci- 
dents which  one  sometimes  finds  ;  these  do  not  greatly 
pain  us,  because  we  feel  both  characters  and  incidents  to 
be  so  thoroughly  unreal.  I  do  not  mind  a  bit  when  the 
hero  of  Monte  Christo  is  flung  into  the  sea  in  a  sack 
from  a  cliff  some  hundreds  of  feet  high  ;  that  pains  one 
no  more  than  the  straits  and  misfortunes  of  Munchau- 
sen. The  wearing  thing  is  to  be  carried  into  homely 
scenes,  and  shown  life-like  characters,  bearing  and  strug- 
gling with  the  worries  of  life  we  know  so  well.  We 
are  reminded,  only  too  vividly,  of  the  hard  strife  of 
reduced  gentility  to  keep  up  appearances,  of  the  aging, 
life-wearing  battle  with  constant  care.  It  is  as  much 
wear  of  heart  to  look  into  that  picture  truthfully  set 
before  us  by  a  man  or  woman  of  genius,  as  to  look  at 
the  sad  reality  of  this  world  of  struggle,  privation,  and 
failure.  It  was  just  the  sight  of  these  that  we  wished  to 
escape,  and  lo  !  there  they  are  again.  So  one  shrinks 
from  the  sympathetic  reading  of  a  story  too  truthfully 
sad.  I  once  read  Vanity  Fair.  I  would  not  read  it 
again  on  any  account,  any  more  than  one  would  wil- 
lingly go  through  the  delirium  of  a  fever,  or  revive 
distinctly  the  circumstances  of  the  occasion  on  which 
one  acted  like  a  fool.  The  story  was  admirable,  incom- 
parable ;  but  it  was  too  sadly  true.  We  see  quite 
enough  of  that  sort  of  thing  in  actual  life :  let  us  not 
have  it  again  when  we  seek  relief  from  the  realities  of 
actual  life.     Once  you  get  into  a  sunshiny  atmosphere 


330  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

when  you  began  to  read  a  work  of  fiction  ;  or  if  the 
light  was  lurid,  it  was  manifestly  the  glare  of  some 
preparation  of  sulphur  in  a  scene-shifter's  hand.  But 
now,  you  are  often  in  a  doleful  grey  from  the  begin- 
ning of  a  story  to  its  end. 

It  is  a  great  blessing  when  a  man's  nature  or  training 
is  such  that  he  is  able  to  turn  away  entirely  from  his 
work  when  he  desists  from  actual  working,  and  to  shut 
his  eyes  to  the  contemplation  of  any  painful  thing  when 
its  contemplation  ceases  to  be  necessary  or  useful.  There 
is  much  in  this  of  native  idiosyncrasy,  but  a  good  deal 
may  be  done  by  discipline.  You  may  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent acquire  the  power  to  throw  off"  from  the  mind  the 
burden  that  is  weighing  upon  it,  at  all  times  except  the 
moment  during  which  the  burden  has  actually  to  be 
borne.  I  envy  the  man  who  stops  his  work  and  in- 
stantly forgets  it  till  it  is  time  to  begin  again.  I  envy 
the  man  who  can  lay  down  his  pen  while  writing  on 
some  subject  that  demands  all  his  mental  stretch,  and 
go  out  for  a  walk,  and  yet  not  through  all  his  walk  be 
wrestling  with  his  subject  still.  Oh  !  if  we  could  lay 
down  the  mind's  load  as  we  can  lay  down  the  body's  ! 
If  the  mind  could  sit  down  and  rest  for  a  breathing 
space,  as  the  body  can  in  climbing  a  hill !  If,  as  we 
decidedly  stop  walking  when  we  cease  to  walk,  we  could 
cease  thinking  when  we  intend  to  cease  to  think  !  It 
was  doubtless  a  great  secret  of  the  work  which  Napo- 
leon did  with  so  little  apparent  wear,  that  he  could  fall 
asleep  whenever  he  chose.  Yet  even  he  could  not  at 
will  look  away  from  the  pigsty :  no  doubt  one  suddenly 
pressed  itself  upon  his  view  on  that  day  when  he  was 
sitting  alone  at  dinner,  and  in  a  moment  sprang  up  with 
a  furious  execration,  and  kicked  over  the  table,  smash- 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET   THEM.  331 

ing  his  plates  as  drunken  Scotch  weavers  sometimes  do. 
Let  us  do  our  best  to  right  the  wrong  ;  but  when  we 
have  done  our  best,  and  go  to  something  else,  let  us 
quite  forget  the  wrong:  it  will  do  no  good  to  remember 
it  now.  It  is  long-continued  wear  that  kills.  We  can 
do  and  bear  a  vast  deal  if  we  have  blinks  of  intermis- 
sion of  bearing  and  doing.  But  the  mind  of  some  men 
is  on  the  stretch  from  the  moment  they  begin  a  task  till 
they  end  it.  Slightly  and  rapidly  as  you  may  run  over 
this  essay,  it  was  never  half-an-hour  out  of  the  writer's 
waking  thoughts  from  the  writing  of  the  first  line  to  the 
writing  of  the  last.  I  have  known  those  who  when  busied 
with  any  work,  legal,  literary,  theological,  parochial,  do- 
mestic, hardly  ever  consciously  ceased  from  it ;  but  were, 
as  Mr.  Bailey  has  expressed  it,  '  about  it,  lashing  at  it  day 
and  night.'  The  swell  continued  though  the  wind  had 
gone  down  ;  the  wheels  spun  round  though  the  steam 
was  shut  off.  Let  me  say  here  (I  say  it  for  myself),  that 
apart  entirely  from  any  consideration  of  the  religious 
sanctions  which  hallow  a  certain  day  of  the  seven,  it 
appeal's  to  me  that  its  value  is  literally  and  really  ines- 
timable to  the  overworked  and  worried  man,  if  it  be 
kept  sacred,  not  merely  from  worldly  work,  but  from  the 
intrusion  of  worldly  cares  and  thoughts.  The  thing  can 
be  done,  my  friend.  As  the  last  hour  of  Saturday 
strikes,  the  burden  may  fall  from  the  mind :  the  pack  of 
worries  may  be  whipped  off;  and  you  may  feel  that 
you  have  entered  on  a  purer,  freer,  happier  life,  which 
will  last  for  four-and-twenty  hours.  I  am  a  Scotchman, 
and  a  Scotch  clergyman,  and  I  hold  views  regarding 
the  Sunday  with  which  I  know  that  some  of  my  most 
esteemed  readers  do  not  sympathize  ;  but  I  believe,  for 
myself,  that  a  strict  resolution  to  preserve  the  Lord's  day 


332  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

sacred  (in  no  Puritanical  sense),  would  lengthen  many  a 
valuable  life ;  would  preserve  the  spring  of  many  a  noble 
mind ;  would  hold  off  in  some  cases  the  approaches  of 
imbecility  or  insanity. 

I  do  not  forget,  in  urging  the  expediency  of  training 
the  mind  to  turn  away  from  worries  which  it  will  do  no 
good  to  continue  to  look  at,  that  anything  evil  or  pain- 
ful has  a  peculiar  power  to  attract  and  compel  attention 
to  it.     A  little  bad  thing  bulks  larger  on  the  mind's  view 
than  a  big  good  thing.     It  persistently  pushes  its  ugly 
face  upon  our  notice.     You  cannot  forget  that  you  have 
bad  tooth-ache,  though  it  be  only  one  little  nerve  that  is 
in  torment,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  body  is  at  ease.     And 
some  little  deformity  of  person,  some  little  worry  in  your 
domestic  arrangements,  keeps  always  intruding  itself,  and 
defying   you    to    forget  or   overlook   it.      If  the   pigsty 
already  referred  to  be  placed  in  the  middle  of  the  pretty 
lawn  before  your  door,  it  will  blot  out  all  the  landscape : 
you  will  see  nothing  save  the  pigsty.     Evil  has  the  ad- 
vantage of  good   in  many  ways.     It  not  merely  detracts 
from  good :  it  neutralizes  it  all.     I  think  it  is  Paley  who 
says  that  the  evils  of  life  supply  no  just  argument  against 
the  divine  benevolence;  inasmuch  as  when  weighed  against 
the  blessings  of  life,  the  latter  turn  the  scale.     It  is  as  if 
you  gave  a  man  five  hundred  a-year,  and  then  took  away 
from  him  one  hundred  :  this  would  amount  virtually  to  giv- 
ing him  a  clear  four  hundred  a-year.     It  always  struck 
me  that  the  case  put  is  not  analogous  to  the  fact.     The 
four  hundred  a-year  left  would    lose    no  part  of   their 
marketable  value  when  the  one  hundred  was  taken  away. 
The  fact  is  rather  as  if  you  gave  a  man  a  large  jug  of 
pure  water,  and  then  cast  into  it  a  few  drops  of  black- 


AND  HOW   TO  MEET  THEM.  333 

draught.  That  little  infusion  of  senna  would  render  the 
entire  water  nauseous.  No  doubt  there  might  be  fifty 
times  as  much  pure  water  as  vile  senna :  but  the  vile 
senna  would  spoil  the  whole.  Even  such  is  the  influence 
of  evil  in  this  system  of  things.  It  does  not  simply 
diminish  the  quantity  of  good  to  be  enjoyed :  to  a  great 
degree  it  destroys  the  enjoyment  of  the  whole  of  the  good. 
Good  carries  weight  in  the  race  with  evil.  It  has  not  a 
fair  start,  nor  a  fair  field.  Don't  you  know,  reader,  that 
it  needs  careful,  constant  training  to  give  a  child  a  good 
education ;  and  possibly  you  may  not  succeed  in  giving 
the  good  education  after  all :  while  no  care  at  all  suffices 
to  give  a  bad  education  ;  and  a  bad  education  is  generally 
successful.  So  in  the  physical  world.  No  field  runs  to 
wheat.  If  a  farmer  wants  a  crop  of  good  grain,  he  must 
work  hard  to  get  it.  But  he  has  only  to  neglect  his  field 
and  do  nothing,  and  he  will  have  weeds  enough.  The 
whole  system  of  things  in  this  world  tends  in  favour  of  evil 
rather  than  of  good.  But  happily,  my  friend,  we  know 
the  reason  why.  And  we  know  that  a  day  is  coming 
which  will  set  these  things  right. 

I  trust  I  have  made  sufficiently  plain  the  precise  error 
against  which  this  essay  is  directed.  The  thing  with 
which  I  find  fault  is  that  querulous,  discontented,  un- 
happy disposition  which  sits  down  and  broods  over  disa- 
greeables and  worries :  not  with  the  view  of  mending 
them,  nor  of  bracing  the  moral  nature  by  the  sight  of 
them :  but  simply  for  the  sake  of  harping  upon  that  te- 
dious string;  —  of  making  yourself  miserable,  and  making 
all  who  come  near  you  miserable  too.  There  are  people 
into  whose  houses  you  cannot  go,  without  being  sickened 
by  the  long  catalogue  of  all  their  slights  and  worries.  It  is 
a  wretched  and  contemptible  thing  to  be  always  hawking 


334  CONCERNING  THE   WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

about  one's  griefs,  in  the  hope  of  exciting  commiseration. 
Let  people  be  assured  that  their  best  friends  will  grow 
wearied  of  hearing  of  their  worries :  let  people  be  as- 
sured that  the  pity  which  is  accorded  them  will  be  in 
most  cases  mingled  with  something  of  contempt.  There 
are  men  and  women  who  have  a  wonderful  scent  for  a 
grievance.  If  you  are  showing  them  your  garden,  and 
there  be  one  untidy  corner,  they  will  go  straight  to  that, 
and  point  it  out  with  mournful  elation,  and  forget  all 
the  rest  of  the  trim  expanse.  If  there  be  one  mortify- 
ing circumstance  in  an  otherwise  successful  and  happy 
lot,  they  will  be  always  reminding  you  of  that.  You 
write  a  book.  Twenty  favourable  reviews  of  it  appear; 
and  two  unfavourable  :  Mr.  Snarling  arrives  after  break- 
fast, sure  as  fate,  with  the  two  unfavourable  reviews  in 
his  pocket.  You  are  cheerful  and  contented  with  your 
lot  and  your  house  :  Mr.  Snarling  never  misses  an  oppor- 
tunity of  pointing  out  to  you  the  dulness  of  your  situation, 
the  inconvenience  of  your  dwelling,  the  inferiority  of  the 
place  you  hold  in  life  to  what  you  might  a  priori  have  an- 
ticipated. You  are  quite  light-hearted  when  Mr.  Snarling 
enters ;  but  when  he  goes,  you  cannot  help  feeling  a  good 
deal  depressed.  The  blackest  side  of  things  has  been 
pressed  on  your  notice  during  his  stay.  I  do  not  think  this 
is  entirely  the  result  of  malice.  It  is  ignorance  of  the 
right  way  to  face  little  worries.  The  man  has  got  a  habit 
of  looking  only  at  the  dunghill.  Would  that  he  could 
learn  better  sense ! 

Let  me  here  remark  a  certain  confusion  which  exists  in 
the  minds  of  many.  I  have  known  persons  who  prided 
themselves  on  their  ability  to  inflict  pain  on  others.  They 
thought  it  a  proof  of  power.  And  no  doubt  to  scarify  a  man 
as  Luther  and  Milton  did,  as  Croker,  Lockhart,  and  Macau- 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET   THEM.  335 

lay  did,  is  a  proof  of  power.  But  sometimes  people  inflict 
pain  on  others  simply  by  making  themselves  disgusting  ; 
and  to  do  this  is  no  proof  of  power.  No  doubt  you  may 
severely  pain  a  refined  and  cultivated  man  or  woman  by 
revolting  vulgarity  of  language  and  manner.  You  may, 
Mrs.  Bouncer,  embitter  your  poor  governess's  life  by  your 
coarse,  petty  tyranny  ;  and  you  may  infuriate  your  ser- 
vants by  talking  at  them  before  strangers  at  table.  But 
let  me  remind  you  that  there  is  a  dignified  and  an  undig- 
nified way  of  inflicting  pain.  There  are  what  may  be 
called  the  Active  and  the  Passive  ways.  You  may  inflict 
annoyance  as  a  viper  does ;  or  you  may  inflict  annoyance 
as  a  dunghill  does.  Some  men  (sharp  critics  belong  to 
this  class)  are  like  the  viper.  They  actively  give  pain. 
You  are  afraid  of  them.  Others,  again,  are  like  a  dung- 
hill. They  are  merely  passively  offensive.  You  are  dis- 
gusted at  these.  Now  the  viperish  man  may  perhaps  be 
proud  of  his  power  of  stinging  :  but  the  dunghill  man  has 
no  reason  earthly  to  be  proud  of  his  power  of  stinking. 
It  is  just  that  he  is  an  offensive  object,  and  men  would 
rather  get  out  of  his  way.  Yet  I  have  heard  a  blockhead 
boast  how  he  had  driven  away  a  refined  gentleman  from 
a  certain  club.  No  doubt  he  did.  The  gentleman 
could  never  go  there  without  the  blockhead  offensively 
revolting  him.  The  blockhead  told  the  story  with  pride. 
Other  blockheads  listened,  and  expressed  their  admira- 
tion of  his  cleverness.  I  looked  in  the  blockhead's  face, 
and  inwardly  said,  Oh  you  human  dunghill !  Think  of 
a  filthy  sewer  boasting,  '  Ah,  I  can  drive  most  people 
away  from  me  !  ' 

To  the  dunghill  class  many  men  belong.  Such,  gen- 
erally, are  those  who  will  never  heartily  say  anything 
pleasant ;  but  who  are  always  ready  to  drop  hints  of  what 


336  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

they  think  will  be  disagreeable  for  you  to  hear.  Such 
are  the  men  who  will  walk  round  your  garden,  when  you 
show  it  to  them  in  the  innocent  pride  of  your  heart :  and 
after  having  accomplished  the  circuit,  will  shrug  their 
shoulders,  snuff  the  air,  and  say  nothing.  Such  are  the 
men  who  will  call  upon  an  old  gentleman,  and  incidentally 
mention  that  they  were  present  the  other  Sunday  when 
his  son  preached  his  first  sermon,  but  say  no  kindly  word 
as  to  the  figure  made  by  the  youthful  divine.  Such  are 
the  men  who,  when  you  show  them  your  fine  new  church, 
will  walk  round  it  hurriedly,  say  carelessly,  '  Very  nice  ;' 
and  begin  to  talk  earnestly  upon  topics  not  connected 
with  ecclesiastical  architecture.  And  such,  as  a  general 
rule,  are  all  the  envious  race,  who  will  never  cordially 
praise  anything  done  by  others,  and  who  turn  green  with 
envy  and  jealousy  if  they  even  hear  others  speak  of  a 
third  party  in  words  of  cordial  praise.  Such  men  are  for 
the  most  part  under-bred,  and  always  of  third  or  fourth- 
rate  talent.  A  really  able  man  heartily  speaks  well  of 
the  talent  that  rivals  or  eclipses  his  own.  He  does  so 
through  the  necessity  of  a  noble  and  magnanimous  nature. 
And  a  gentleman  will  generally  do  as  much,  through  the 
influence  of  a  training  which  makes  the  best  of  the  best 
features  in  the  character  of  man.  It  warms  one's  heart 
to  hear  a  great  and  illustrious  author  speak  of  a  young 
one  who  is  struggling  up  the  slope.  But  it  is  a  sorry 
thing  to  hear  Mr.  Snarling  upon  the  same  subject. 

I  have  sometines  wondered  whether  what  is  commonly 
called  coolness  in  human  beings  is  the  result  of  a  remark- 
able power  of  looking  away  from  things  which  it  is  not 
thought  desirable  to  see ;  or  of  a  still  more  remarkable 
power  of  looking  at  disagreeable  things  and  not  minding. 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  337 

You  remember  somewhere  in  the  Life  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  we  are  told  of  a  certain  joyous  dinner-party  at  his 
house  in  Castle-street.  Of  all  the  gay  party  there  was 
none  so  gay  as  a  certain  West  Country  baronet.  Yet  in 
his  pocket  he  had  a  letter  containing  a  challenge  which 
he  had  accepted  ;  and  next  morning  early  he  was  off 
to.  the  duel  in  which  he  was  killed.  Now,  there  must 
have  been  a  woful  worry  gnawing  at  the  clever  man's 
heart,  you  would  say.  How  did  he  take  it  so  coolly  ? 
Did  he  really  forget  for  the  time  the  risk  that  lay  before 
him  ?  Or  did  he  look  fairly  at  it,  yet  not  care  ?  He  was 
a  kind-hearted  man  as  well  as  a  brave  one  :  surely  he 
must  have  been  able,  through  the  jovial  evening,  to  look 
quite  away  from  the  possibility  of  a  distracted  widow, 
and  young  children  left  fatherless.  Sometimes  this  cool- 
ness appears  in  base  and  sordid  forms :  it  is  then  the  re- 
sult of  obtuseness  of  nature,  —  of  pure  lack  of  discern- 
ment and  feeling.  People  thus  qualified  are  able  with 
entire  composure  to  do  things  which  others  could  not  do 
to  save  their  lives.  Such  are  the  people  who  constitute 
a  class  which  is  an  insufferable  nuisance  of  civilized  soci- 
ety,—  the  class  of  uninvited  and  unwelcome  guests.  I 
am  thinking  of  people  who  will  without  any  invitation 
push  themselves  and  their  baggage  into  the  house  of  a 
man  who  is  almost  a  stranger  to  them ;  and  in  spite  of 
the  studied  presentation  of  the  cold  shoulder,  and  in  spite 
of  every  civil  hint  that  their  presence  is  most  unwelcome, 
make  themselves  quite  at  home  for  so  long  as  it  suits  them 
to  remain.  I  have  heard  of  people  who  would  come,  to 
the  number  of  three  or  four,  to  the  house  of  a  poor  gen- 
tleman to  whom  every  shilling  was  a  consideration  ;  and 
without  invitation  remain  for  four,  six,  ten  weeks  at 
a  stretch.  I  have  heard  of  people  who  would  not  only 
22 


338  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

come  uninvited  to  stay  at  a  small  house,  but  bring  with 
them  some  ugly  individual  whom  its  host  had  never  seen  : 
and  possibly  a  mangy  dog  in  addition.  And  such  folk 
will  with  great  freedom  drink  the  wine,  little  used  by  that 
plain  household,  and  hospitably  press  the  ugly  individual 
to  drink  it  freely  too.  I  declare  there  is  something  that 
approaches  the  sublime  in  the  intensity  of  such  folk's 
stolidity.  They  will  not  see  that  they  are  not  wanted. 
They  jauntily  make  themselves  quite  at  home.  If  they 
get  so  many  weeks'  board  and  lodging,  they  don't  care 
how  unpleasantly  it  is  given.  They  will  write  for  your 
carriage  to  meet  them  at  the  railway  station,  as  if  they 
were  ordering  a  hackney-coach.  This  subject,  however, 
is  too  large  to  be  taken  up  here :  it  must  have  an  entire 
essay  to  itself.  But  probably  my  reader  will  agree  with 
me  in  thinking  that  people  may  possess  in  an  excessive 
degree  the  valuable  power  of  looking  away  from  what 
they  don't  wish  to  see. 

And  yet  —  and  yet  —  do  you  not  feel  that  it  is  merely 
by  turning  our  mind's  eye  away  from  many  thoughts 
which  are  only  too  intrusive,  that  you  can  hope  to  enjoy 
much  peace  or  quiet  in  such  a  world  as  this  ?  How  could 
you  feel  any  relish  for  the  comforts  of  your  own  cheerful 
lot  if  you  did  not  forget  the  wretchedness,  anxiety,  and 
want  which  enter  into  the  pinched  and  poverty-stricken 
lot  of  others  ?  You  do  not  like,  when  you  lay  yourself 
down  at  night  on  your  quiet  bed,  to  think  of  the  poor 
wretch  in  the  condemned  cell  of  the  town  five  miles  off, 
who  will  meet  his  violent  death  to-morrow  in  the  dismal 
drizzling  dawn.  Some,  I  verily  believe,  will  not  sympa- 
thize with  the  feeling.  There  are  persons,  I  believe,  who 
could  go  on  quite  comfortably  with  their  dinner  with  a 


AXD  HOW   TO  MEET   THEM.  339 

starving  beggar  standing  outside  the  window  and  watch- 
ing each  morsel  they  ate  with  famished  eyes.  Perhaps 
there  are  some  who  would  enjoy  their  dinner  all  the  bet- 
ter ;  and  to  that  class  would  belong  (if  indeed  he  be  not 
a  pure,  dense,  unmitigated,  unimprovable  blockhead,  who 
did  not  understand  or  feel  the  force  of  what  he  said)  that 
man  who  lately  preached  a  sermon  in  which  he  stated 
that  a  great  part  of  the  happiness  of  heaven  would  con- 
sist in  looking  down  complacently  on  the  torments  of  hell, 
and  enjoying  the  contrast !  What  an  idea  must  that  man 
have  had  of  the  vile,  heartless  selfishness  of  a  soul  in 
bliss  !  No.  For  myself,  though  holding  humbly  all  that 
the  Church  believes  and  the  Bible  teaches,  I  say  that  if 
there  be  a  mystery  hard  of  explanation,  it  is  how  the  happy 
spirit  can  be  happy  even  There,  though  missing  from  its 
side  those  who  in  this  life  were  dearest.  You  remember 
the  sublime  prayer  of  Aquinas  —  a  prayer  for  Satan  him- 
self. You  remember  the  gush  of  kindliness  which  made 
Burns  express  a  like  sorrow  even  for  the  dark  Father  of 
Evil :  '  I'm  wae  to  think  upon  your  den,  Even  for  your 
sake !  '  No.  The  day  may  come  when  it  will  not  grieve 
us  to  contemplate  misery  which  is  intolerable  and  irreme- 
diable ;  but  this  will  be  because  we  shall  then  have  gained 
such  clear  and  right  views  of  all  things,  that  we  shall  see 
things  as  they  appear  to  God,  and  then  doubtless  see  that 
all  He  does  is  right.  But  we  may  be  well  assured  that 
it  will  not  be  the  selfish  satisfaction  of  contrasting  our 
own  happiness  with  that  misery  which  will  enable  us  to 
contemplate  it  with  complacency :  it  will  be  a  humble 
submission  of  our  own  will  to  the  One  Will  that  is  always 
wise  and  right.  Yet  you  remember,  reader,  how  one 
of  the  profoundest  and  acutest  of  living  theologians  is  fain 
to  have  recourse,  in  the  case  of  this  saddest  of  all  sad 


340  CONCERNING  THE  WORRIES   OF  LIFE, 

thoughts,  to  the  same  relief  which  I  have  counselled  for 
life's  little  worries  —  oh  how  little  when  we  think  of  this  ! 
Archbishop  Whately,  in  treating  of  this  great  difficulty, 
suggests  the  idea  that  in  a  higher  state  the  soul  may  have 
the  power  of  as  decidedly  turning  the  thoughts  away  from 
a  pi  inful  subject  as  we  now  have  of  turning  the  eyes 
away  from  a  disagreeable  sight. 

I  thought  of  these  things  this  afternoon  in  a  gay  and 
stirring  scene.     It  was  a  frozen  lake  of  considerable  ex- 
tent, lying  in  a  beautiful  valley,  at  the  foot  of  a  majestic 
hill.     The  lake  was  covered  with  people,  all  in  a  state  of 
high  enjoyment :  scores  of  skaters  were  flying  about,  and 
there  was  a  roaring  of  curling-stones   like   the  distant 
thunder  that  was   heard  by  Rip  van  Winkle.     The   sky 
was  blue  and  sunshiny ;  the    air   crisp    and   clear ;  the 
cliffs,  slopes,  and  fields  around  were  fair  with  untrodden 
snow ;  but  still  one  could  not  quite  exclude  the  recollec- 
tion that  this  brisk  frost,  so  bracing  and  exhilarating  to 
us,  is  the  cause  of  great  suffering  to  multitudes.     The 
frost  causes  most  outdoor  work  to  cease.     No  building, 
no  fieldwork,  can  go  forward,  and  so  the  frost  cuts  off  the 
bread  from  many  hungry  mouths  ;  and  fireless  rooms  and 
thin  garments  are   no  defence  against  this   bitter  chill. 
Well,  you  would   never  be  cheerful  at   all   but  for  the 
blessed  gift  of  occasional  forgetfulness  !    Those  who  have 
seen  things  too  accurately  as  they  are,  have  always  been 
sorrowful  even  when   unsoured   men.     Here,  you   man 
(one  of  six  or  seven  eager  parties  with  chairs  and  gim- 
lets), put  on  my  skates.     Don't  bore  that  hole  in  the  heel 
of  the  boot  too  deep;  you  may  penetrate   to  something 
more    sensitive    than    leather.     Screw    in ;    buckle    the 
straps,  but  not  too  tight:  and  now  we  are  on   our  feet, 


AND  HOW  TO  MEET  THEM.  341 

with  the  delightful  sense  of  freedom  to  fly  about  in  any 
direction  with  almost  the  smooth  swiftness  of  a  bird. 
Come,  my  friend,  let  us  be  off  round  the  lake,  with  long 
strokes,  steadily,  and  not  too  fast.  We  may  not  be  quite 
like  Sidney's  Arcadian  shepherd-boy,  piping  as  if  he 
never  would  grow  old ;  yet  let  us  be  like  kindly  skaters, 
forgetting,  in  the  exhilarating  exercise  that  quickens  the 
pulse  and  flushes  the  cheek,  that  there  are  such  things  as 
evil  and  worry  in  this  world ! 


CHAPTER   V. 


CONCERNING  GIVING   UP  AND   COMING  DOWN. 


IOT  so  very  much  depends  upon  a  beginning 
after  all.  The  inexperienced  writer  racks  his 
brain  for  something  striking  to  set  out  with. 
He  is  anxious  to  make  a  good  impression  at 
first.  He  fancies  that  unless  you  hook  your  reader  by 
your  first  sentence,  your  reader  will  break  away  ;  making 
up  his  mind  that  what  you  have  got  to  say  is  not  worth 
the  reading.  Now  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  a  preacher, 
who  is  desirous  of  keeping  his  congregation  in  that  dead 
silence  and  fixedness  of  attention  which  one  sometimes 
sees  in  church,  must,  as  a  general  rule,  produce  that  audi- 
ble hush  by  his  first  sentence  if  he  is  to  produce  it  at  all. 
If  people  in  church  are  permitted  for  even  one  minute  at 
the  beginning  of  the  sermon  to  settle  themselves,  bodily 
and  mentally,  into  the  attitude  of  inattention,  and  of  think- 
ing of  something  other  than  the  preacher's  words  the 
preacher  will  hardly  catch  them  up  again.  He  will 
hardly,  by  any  amount  of  earnestness,  eloquence,  point- 
edness.  or  oddity,  gain  that  universal  and  sympathetic 
interest  of  which  he  fiung  away  his  chance  by  some  long, 
involved,  indirect,  and  dull  sentence  at  starting.  But  the 
writer  is  not  tried  by  so  exacting  a  standard.  Most 
readers  will  glance  over  the  first  few  pages  of  a  book 
before   throwing    it    aside    as    stupid.     The  writer  may 


CONCEKNING  GIVING  UP  AND  COMING  DOWN.      343 

overcome  the  evil  effect  of  a  first  sentence,  or  even  a 
first  paragraph,  which  may  have  been  awkward,  ugly, 
dull  —  yea  silly.  I  could  name  several  very  popular 
works  which  set  out  in  a  most  unpromising  way.  I  par- 
ticularly dislike  the  first  sentence  of  Adam  Bede,  but  it  is 
redeemed  by  hundreds  of  noble  ones.  It  is  not  certain 
that  the  express  train  which  is  to  devour  the  four  hun- 
dred miles  between  London  and  Edinburgh  in  ten  hours, 
shall  run  its  first  hundred  yards  much  faster  than  the 
lagging  parliamentary.  There  can  be  no  question  that 
the  man  whom  all  first  visitants  of  the  House  of  Commons 
are  most  eager  to  see  and  hear  is  Mr.  Disraeli.  He  is 
the  lord  of  debate  ;  not  unrivalled  perhaps,  but  certainly 
unsurpassed.  Yet  everybody  knows  he  made  a  very 
poor  beginning.  In  short,  my  reader,  if  something  that 
is  really  good  is  to  follow,  a  bad  outset  may  be  excused. 

One  readily  believes  what  one  wishes  to  believe ;  and 
I  wish  to  hold  by  this  principle.  For  I  have  accumu- 
lated many  thoughts  Concerning  Giving  Up  and  Cuming 
Down  ;  and  I  have  got  them  lying  upon  this  table,  noted 
down  on  six  long  slips  of  paper.  I  vainly  fancy  that  I 
have  certain  true  and  useful  things  to  say  ;  but  I  have 
experienced  extraordinary  difficulty  in  deciding  how  I 
should  begin  to  say  them.  I  have  sat  this  morning  by  the 
fireside  for  an  hour,  looking  intently  at  the  glowing  coals  ; 
but  though  I  could  think  of  many  things  to  say  about  the 
middle  of  my  essay,  I  could  think  of  nothing  satisfac- 
tory with  which  to  begin  it.  But  comfort  came  as  the 
thought  gradually  developed  itself,  that  it  really  mat- 
tered very  little  how  the  essay  might  be  begun,  provided 
it  went  on  ;  and,  above  ail,  ended.  A  dull  beginning  will 
probably  be  excused  to  the  essayist  more  readily  than  to 
the  writer  whose  sole  purpose  is  to  amuse.     The  essayist 


344  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

pleases  himself  with  the  belief  that  his  readers  are  by 
several  decrees  more  intelligent  and  thoughtful  than  the 
ordinary  readers  of  ordinary  novels ;  and  that  many  of 
them,  if  they  find  thoughts  which  are  just  and  practical, 
will  regard  as  a  secondary  matter  the  order  in  which 
these  thoughts  come.  The  sheep's  head  of  northern 
cookery  has  not,  at  the  first  glance,  an  attractive  aspect : 
nor  is  the  nutriment  it  affords  very  symmetrically  ar- 
ranged :  but  still,  as  Dr.  John  Brown  has  beautifully 
remarked,  it  supplies  a  deal  of  fine  confused  feeding.  I 
look  at  my  six  pieces  of  paper,  closely  written  over  in  a 
very  small  hand.  They  seem  to  me  as  the  sheep's  head. 
There  is  feeding  there,  albeit  somewhat  confused.  It 
matters  not  much  where  we  shall  begin.  Come,  mv 
friendly  reader,  and  partake  of  the  homely  fare. 

The  great  lesson  which  the  wise  and  true  man  is 
learning  through  life,  is,  how  to  come  down  without 
giving  up.  Reckless  and  foolish  people  confuse  these 
two  things.  It  is  far  easier  to  give  up  than  to  come 
down,  it  is  far  less  repugnant  to  our  natural  self-conceit. 
It  befits  much  better  our  natural  laziness.  It  enables  us 
to  fancy  ourselves  heroic,  when  in  truth  we  are  vain, 
slothful,  and  fretful.  I  have  not  words  to  express  my 
belief  on  this  matter  so  strongly  as  I  feel  it.  Oh  !  I  ven- 
erate the  man  who  with  a  heart  unsoured  has  come 
down,  and  come  down  far,  but  who  never  will  give  up  ! 

I  fancy  my  reader  wondering  at  my  excitement,  and 
doubtful  of  my  meaning.  Let  me  explain  my  terms. 
What  is  meant  by  giving  up  :  what  by  coming  down  ? 

By  coming  down  I  understand  this:  Learning  from 
the  many  mortifications,  disappointment-,  and  rebuffs 
which  we  must  all  meet  .1-  we  go  on  through  life,  to 
think   more  humbly  of  ourselves,  intellectually,  morally, 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  345 

socially,  physically,  aesthetically :  yet,  while  thinking 
thus  humbly  of  ourselves  and  our  powers,  to  resolve  that 
we  shall  continue  to  do  our  very  best :  and  all  this  with 
a  kjndly  heart  and  a  contented  mind.  Such  is  my  ideal 
of  true  and  Christian  coming  down :  and  I  regard  as  a 
true  hero  the  man  who  does  it  rightly.  It  is  a  noble 
thing  for  a  man  to  say  to  himself,  '  I  am  not  at  all  what 
I  had  vainly  fancied  myself:  my  mark  is  far,  very  far  low- 
er than  I  thought  it  had  been  :  I  had  fancied  myself  a 
great  genius,  but  I  find  I  am  only  a  man  of  decent  ability  : 
I  had  fancied  myself  a  man  of  great  weight  in  the  county, 
but  I  find  I  have  very  little  influence  indeed :  I  had  fan- 
cied that  my  stature  was  six  feet  four,  but  I  find  that  I 
am  only  five  feet  two:  I  had  fancied  that  in  such  a  com- 
petition I  never  could  be  beaten,  but  in  truth  I  have  been 
sadly  beaten  :  I  had  fancied  [suffer  me,  reader,  the  sol- 
emn allusion]  that  my  Master  had  entrusted  me  with  ten 
talents,  but  I  find  I  have  no  more  than  one.  But  I  will 
accept  the  humble  level  which  is  mine  by  right,  and  with 
God's  help  I  will  do  my  very  best  there.  I  will  not  kick 
dogs  nor  curse  servants :  I  will  not  try  to  detract  from 
the  standing  of  men  who  are  cleverer,  more  eminent,  or 
taller  than  myself:  I  will  heartily  wish  them  well.  I 
will  not  grow  soured,  moping,  and  misanthropic.  I  know 
I  am  beaten  and  disappointed,  but  I  will  hold  on  manfully 
still,  and  never  give  up  ! '  Such,  kindly  reader,  is  Chris- 
tian coming  down  ! 

And  what  is  giving  up  ?  Of  course,  you  understand 
my  meaning  now.  Giving  up  means  that  when  you  are 
beaten  and  disappointed,  and  made  to  understand  that 
your  mark  is  lower  than  you  had  fancied,  you  will  throw 
down  your  arms  in  despair,  and  resolve  that  you  will  try 
no  more.    As  for  you,  brave  man,  if  you  don't  get  all  you 


346  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

want,  you  are  resolved  you  shall  have  nothing.     If  you 
are  not  accepted  as  the  cleverest  and  greatest  man,  you 
are  resolved  you  shall  be  no  man  at  all.     And  while  the 
other  is  Christian  coming  down,  this  is  un-Christian,  fool- 
ish, and  wicked  giving  up.     No  doubt,  it  is  an  extremely 
natural  thing.     It  is  the  first  and  readiest  impulse  of  the 
undisciplined  heart.     It  is  in  human  nature  to  say,  '  If  I 
don't    have  all   the  pudding,   I    shall   have   none.'     The 
grand  way  of  expressing  the  same  sentiment  is,  Aut  C<b- 
sar  aut  nullus.    Of  course,  the  Latin  words  stir  the  youth- 
ful heart.    You  sympathize  with  them,  I  know,  my  reader 
under  five-and-twenty.    You  will  see  through  them  some 
day.     They  are  just  the  heroic  way  of  saying,  I  shall 
give  up,  but  I  never  shall  come  down  !      They  state  a 
sentiment  for  babies,  boys,  and  girls,  not  for   reasonable 
women  and  men.     For  babies,  I  say.     Let  me  relate  a 
parable.     Yesterday  I  went  into  a  cottage,  where  a  child 
of  two  years  old  sat  upon  his  mother's  knee.     The  little 
man  had  in  his  hand  a  large  slice  of  bread  and  butter 
which  his  mother  had  just  given  him.     By  words  not  in- 
telligible to  me,  he  conveyed  to  his  mother  the  fact  that 
he  desired   that  jam  should  be  spread  upon  the  slice  of 
bread   and   butter.     But  his  mother  informed  him  that 
bread  and  butter  must  suffice,  without  the  further  luxury. 
The  young  human  being  (how  thoroughly  human)  con- 
sidered for  a  moment ;  and   then  dashed  the   bread   and 
butter  to  the  further  end  of  the  room.    There  it  was  :  Aut 
Ccesar  aut  nullus!     The   baby   would   give   up,   but  it 
would  not  come  down !     Alexander  the  Great,  look  at 
yourself!   Marius  among  the  ruins  of  Carthage,  what  do 
you  think  you  look  like  here  ?     By  the  time  the  youthful 
reader  comes  to  understand  that  Byron's  dark,  mysterious 
heroes,  however  brilliantly  set  forth,  are  in   conception 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  347 

simply  childish  ;  by  the  time  he  is  able  to  appreciate 
Philip  Van  Artevelde  (I  mean  Mr.  Henry  Taylor's  no- 
ble tragedy)  ;  he  will  discern  that  various  things  which 
look  heroic  at  the  first  glance,  will  not  work  in  the  long 
run.  And  that  practical  principle  is  irrational  which  will 
not  work.  And  that  sentiment  which  is  irrational  is  not 
heroic.  The  truly  heroic  thing  to  say,  as  well  as  the  ra- 
tional thing,  is  this  :  If  I  don't  get  all  the  pudding,  I  shall 
be  content  if  I  get  what  I  deserve,  or  what  God  sends. 
If  I  am  not  Caesar,  there  is  no  need  that  I  should  be 
nullus :  I  shall  be  content  to  be  the  highly  respectable 
Mr.  Smith.  Though  I  am  not  equal  to  Shakspeare,  I 
may  write  a  good  play.  Though  inferior  to  Bishop  Wil- 
berforce,  I  shall  yet  do  my  best  to  be  a  good  preacher. 
It  is  a  fine  thing,  a  noble  thing,  as  it  appears  to  me,  for  a 
man  to  be  content  to  labour  hard  and  do  his  utmost, 
though  well  aware  that  the  result  will  be  no  more  than 
decent  mediocrity,  after  all.  It  is  a  finer  thing,  and  more 
truly  heroic,  to  do  your  very  best  and  only  be  second-rate, 
than  even  to  resolve,  like  the  man  in  the  Iliad,  — 

"  'Aiev  upiortveiv,  /cat  vneipoxov  i^ifiEvaL  tMuv." 

There  is  a  strain  put  upon  the  moral  nature  in  contentedly 
and  perseveringly  doing  this,  greater  than  is  put  upon  the 
intellectual  by  the  successful  effort  to  be  best.  And  what 
would  become  of  the  world  if  all  men  went  upon  Homer's 
principle  ;  and  rather  than  come  down  from  its  sublime 
elevation,  would  fling  down  their  tools  and  give  up  ? 
Shall  I,  because  I  cannot  preach  like  Mr.  Melvill,  cease 
to  write  sermons  ?  Or  shall  I,  because  I  cannot  counsel 
and  charm  like  the  author  of  Friends  in  Council,  cease  to 
write  essays  ?  You  may  rely  upon  it  I  shall  not.  I  do 
not  forget  who  said,  in  words  of  praise  concerning  one 


348  CONCEKNING  GIVING  UP 

who  had  done  what  was  absolutely  but  very  little,  '  She 
hath  done  what  she  could  !  '  And  what  would  become  of 
me  and  my  essays,  if  the  reader,  turning  to  them  from 
the  pages  of  Hazlitt  or  Charles  Lamb,  should  say,  '  I 
shall  not  come  down  ;  and  if  I  find  I  have  to  do  so  I  shall 
give  up  ? '  What  if  the  reader  refused  to  accept  the  plain 
bread  and  butter  which  I  can  furnish,  unless  it  should  be 
accompanied  by  that  jam  which  I  am  not  able  to  add  ? 

Giving  up,  then,  is  the  doing  of  mortified  self-conceit, 
of  sulky  pettishness,  of  impatience,  of  recklessness,  of  des- 
peration. It  says  virtually  to  the  great  Disposer  of 
events,  '  Every  thing  in  this  world  must  go  exactly  as  I 
wish  it,  or  I  shall  sit  down  and  die.'  It  is  of  the  nature 
of  a  moral  strike.  But  coming  down  generally  means 
coming  to  juster  and  sounder  views  of  one's  self  and  one's 
own  importance  and  usefulness  ;  and  if  you  come  down 
gracefully,  genially,  and  Christianly  you  work  on  dili- 
gently and  cheerfully  at  that  lower  level.  No  doubt,  to 
come  down  is  a  tremendous  trial ;  it  is  a  sore  mortifica- 
tion. But  trials  and  mortifications,  my  reader,  are  useful 
things  for  you  and  me.  The  hasty  man,  when  obliged  to 
come  down,  is  ready  to  conclude  that  he  may  as  well  give 
up.  In  some  matters  it  is  a  harder  thing  to  go  the  one 
mile  and  stop  at  the  end  of  it,  than  to  go  the  twain.  It 
is  much  more  difficult  to  stop  decidedly  half-way  down  a 
very  steep  descent,  than  to  go  all  the  way.  If  you  are 
beaten  in  some  competition,  it  is  much  easier  to  resolve 
recklessly  that  you  will  never  try  again,  than  to  set  man- 
fully to  work,  with  humble  views  of  yourself,  and  try 
once  more.  "Wisdom  comes  down  :  folly  gives  up.  Wis- 
dom, I  say,  comes  down  ;  for  1  think  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  most  men.  in  order  to  think  rightly  of  them- 
selves, must  come  to  think  much  more  humbly  of  them- 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  849 

selves  than  they  are  naturally  disposed  to  do.  Few  men 
estimate  themselves  too  lowly.  Even  people  who  lack 
confidence  in  themselves  are  not  without  a  great  measure 
of  latent  self-esteem  ;  and,  indeed,  it  is  natural  enough 
that  men  should  rate  themselves  too  high,  till  experience 
compels  them  to  come  down.  I  am  talking  of  even  sen- 
sible and  worthy  men.  They  know  they  have  worked 
hard ;  they  know  that  what  they  have  done  has  cost  them 
great  pains  ;  they  look  with  instinctive  partiality  at  the 
results  they  have  accomplished  ;  they  are  sure  these  re- 
sults are  good,  and  they  do  not  know  hoiv  good  till  they 
learn  by  comparative  trial.  But  when  the  comparative 
trial  comes,  there  are  few  who  do  not  meet  their  match  — 
few  who  do  not  find  it  needful  to  come  down.  Perhaps 
even  Shakspeare  felt  he  must  come  down  a  little  when 
he  looked  into  one  or  two  of  Christopher  Marlowe's  plays. 
Clever  boys  at  school,  and  clever  lads  at  college,  natu- 
rally think  their  own  little  circle  of  the  cleverest  boys  or 
lads  to  contain  some  of  the  cleverest  fellows  in  the  world. 
They  know  how  well  they  can  do  many  things,  and  how 
hard  they  have  worked  to  do  them  so  well.  Of  course, 
they  will  have  to  come  down,  after  longer  experience  of 
life.  It  is  not  that  the  set  who  ranked  first  among  their 
young  companions  are  not  clever  fellows  ;  but  the  world 
is  wide  and  its  population  is  big,  and  they  will  fall  in  with 
cleverer  fellows  still.  It  is  not  that  the  head  boy  does 
not  write  Greek  iambics  well,  but  it  will  go  hard  but 
somewhere  he  will  find  some  one  who  will  write  them 
better.  They  are  rare  exceptions  in  the  race  of  mankind 
who,  however  good  they  may  be,  and  however  admirably 
they  may  do  some  one  thing,  will  not  some  day  meet,  their 
match  —  meet  their  superior,  and  so  have  painfully  to 
come   down.     And,  so  far  as   my  own   experience   has 


350     #  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

gone,  I  have  found  that  the  very,  very  few,  who  never  meet 
a  taking  down,  who  are  first  at  school,  then  first  at  college, 
then  first  in  life,  seem  by  God's  appointment  to  have 
been  so  happily  framed  that  they  could  do  without  it ; 
that  to  think  justly  of  themselves  they  did  not  need  to 
come  down  ;  that  their  modesty  and  humility  equalled 
their  merit ;  and  that  (though  not  unconscious  of  their 
powers  and  their  success)  they  remained,  amid  the  in- 
cense of  applause  which  would  have  intoxicated  others, 
unaffected,  genial,  and  unspoiled. 

People  who  lead  a  quiet  country  life  amid  their  own 
belongings,  seeing  little  of  those  of  bigger  men,  insensibly 
form  so  excessive  an  estimate  of  their  personal  posses- 
sions as  lays  them  open  to  the  risk  of  many  disagreeable 
takings  down.  You,  solitary  scholar  in  the  country  par- 
sonage, have  lived  for  six  months  among  your  books  till 
you  have  come  to  fancy  them  quite  a  great  library.  But 
you  pay  a  visit  to  some  wealthy  man  of  literary  tastes. 
You  see  his  fine  editions,  his  gorgeous  bindings,  his 
carved  oak  book-cases  ;  and  when  you  return  home  you 
will  have  to  contend  with  a  temptation  to  be  disgusted 
with  your  own  little  collection  of  books.  Now,  if  you 
are  a  wise  man,  you  will  come  down,  but  you  wont  give 
up  ;  you  will  admit  to  yourself  that  your  library  is  not 
quite  what  you  had  grown  to  think  it,  but  you  will  hold 
that  it  is  a  fair  library  after  all.  When  you  go  and  see 
the  grand  acres  of  evergreens  at  some  fine  country  house, 
do  not  return  mortified  at  the  prospect  of  your  own  little 
shrubbery  which  looked  so  fine  in  the  morning  before 
you  set  out.  When  you  have  beheld  Mr.  Smith's  fine 
thoroughbreds,  resist  the  impulse  to  whack  your  own 
poor  steed.  Bather  pat  the  poor  thing's  neck :  gracefully 
come  down.     It  was  a  fine  thing,  Cato,  banished  from 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  351 

Rome,  yet  having  his   little   senate  at  Utica.     He  had 
been  compelled  to  come  down,  indeed,  but  he  clung  to 
the  dear  old  institution  ;  he  would  not  give  up.     I  have 
enjoyed  the  spectacle  of  a  lady,  brought  up  in  a  noble 
baronial  dwelling,  living  in  a  pretty  little  parsonage,  and 
quite  pleased  and  happy  there  ;  not  sulking,  not  fretting, 
not  talking  like  an  idiot  of  '  what  she  had  been  accus- 
tomed  to,'   but    heartily   reconciling    herself  to   simpler 
things  —  coming  down,  in  short,  but  never  dreaming  of 
giving  up.     So  have  I  esteemed  the  clergyman  like  Syd- 
ney Smith,  who  had  commanded  the  attention  of  crowded 
congregations  of  educated  folk,  of  gentlemen  and  gentle- 
women, yet  who  works  faithfully  and   cheerfully  in   a 
rural  parish,  and  prepares  his  sermons  diligently,  with 
the  honest  desire  to  make  them  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive to  a  handful  of  simple  country  people.     Of  course, 
he  knows  that  he  has  come  down,  but  he  does  not  dream 
of  giving  up. 

There  is  in  human  nature  a  curious  tendency  to  think 
that  if  you  are  obliged  to  fall,  or  if  you  have  fallen,  a 
good  deal,  you  may  just  as  well  go  all  the  way  ;  and  it 
would  be  hard  to  reckon  the  amount  of  misery  and  ruin 
which  have  resulted  from  this  mistaken  fancy,  that  if  you 
have  come  down,  you  may  give  up  at  once.  A  poor 
man,  possibly  under  some  temptation  that  does  not  come 
once  in  ten  years,  gets  tipsy  ;  walking  along  in  that  state 
he  meets  the  parish  clergyman  ;  the  clergyman's  eye  rests 
on  him  in  sorrow  and  reproach.  The  poor  man  is  heart- 
ily ashamed ;  he  is  brought  to  a  point  at  which  he  may 
turn  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way.  He  has  not  read 
this  essay,  and  he  takes  the  wrong.  He  thinks  he  has 
been  so  bad,  he  cannot  be  worse.  He  goes  home  and 
thrashes  his  wife  ;  he  ceases  attending  church  ;  he  takes 


352  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

his  children  from  school :  he  begins  to  go  to  destruction. 
All  this  founds  on   his   erroneously  imagining  that  you 
cannot  come  down  without  giving  up.    But  I  helieve  that, 
in  truth,  as  the  general  rule,  the  fatal  and  shameful  deed 
on  which  a  man  must  look  back  in  bitterness,  and  sorrow 
all  his  life,  was  done  after  the  point  at  which  he   grew 
reckless.     It  was  because  he  had  given  up  that  he  took 
the  final  desperate  step  ;  he  did  not  give  up  because  he 
had  taken  it.     The  man  did  a  really  desperate  deed  be- 
cause he  thought  wrongly  that  he  had  done  a  desperate 
deed  already,  and  could  not  now  be  any  worse  ;  and  sad 
as  are  intellectual  and  social  coming  down,  and  likely  to 
result  in  giving  up  as  these  are,  they  are  not  half  so  sad 
nor  half  so  perilous  as  moral  coming  down.     It  must  in- 
deed be  a  miserable  thing  for  man  or  woman  to  feel  that 
they  have  done  something  which  will  shame  all  after  life 
—  something  which  will   never  let  them   hold   up  their 
head  again,  something  which  will  make  them  (to  use  the 
expressive  language  of  Scripture)    '  go   softly  all   their 
days.'     Well,  let  such  come  down  ;  let  them  learn  to  be 
humble  and  penitent ;  but  for  any  sake   don't  let  them 
give  up  !      That  is   the  great  Tempter's  last  and  worst 
suggestion.     His  suggestion  to  the  fallen  man  or  woman 
is,  You  are  now  so  bad  that  you  cannot  be  worse  —  you 
had  better  give  up  at  once;  and  Judas  listened  to  it  and 
went  and  hanged  himself;  and  the  poor  Magdalen,  fallen 
far,  but  with  a  deep  abyss  beneath  her  yet,  steals  at  mid- 
night, to  the  dark  arch  and  the  dark  river,  with  the  bitter 
desperate  resolution   of  Hood's   exquisite  poem,   '  Any- 
where, anywhere,  out  of  the  world  ! '     I  remember  an 
amusing  exemplification  of  the  natural  tendency  to  think 
that  having  come  down  you   must  give  up,  in  a  play  in 
which  I  once  saw  Keeley,  in  my  play-going  days.     He 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  353 

fancied  that  he  had  (unintentionally)  killed  a  man  :  his 
horror  was  extreme.  Soon  after,  hy  another  mischance, 
he  killed  (as  he  is  led  to  believe)  another  man  :  his  hor- 
ror is  redoubled ;  but  now  there  mingles  with  it  a  reckless 
desperation.  Having  done  such  dreadful  things,  he  con- 
cludes that  he  cannot  be  worse,  whatever  he  may  do. 
Having  come  so  far  down,  he  thinks  he  may  as  well  give 
up ;  and  so  the  little  fat  man  exclaims,  with  a  fiendish 
laugh,  'Now  I  think  I  had  better  kill  somebody  else  !' 
Ah,  how  true  to  nature !  The  plump  desperado  was  at 
the  moment  beyond  remembering  that  the  sound  view  of 
the  case  was,  that  if  he  had  done  so  much  mischief  it  was 
the  more  incumbent  on  him  to  do  no  more.  The  poor  lad 
in  a  counting-house  who  wellnigh  breaks  his  mother's 
heart  by  taking  a  little  money  not  his  own,  need  not  break 
it  outright  by  going  entirely  to  ruin.  Rather  gather  your- 
self up  from  your  tall.  Though  the  sky-scraping  spars  are 
gone,  we  may  rig  a  jury  mast :  — 

'  And  from  the  wreck,  far  scattered  o'er  the  rocks, 
Build  us  a  little  bark  of  hope  once  more.' 

We  are  being  taught  all  through  life  to  come  down  in 

our  anticipations,  our  self-estimation,  our  ambition.     We 

aim  high  at  first.    Children  expect  to  be  kings,  or  at  least 

to  be  always  eating  plum  pudding  and  drinking  cream. 

Clever  boys  expect  to  be  great  and  famous  men.     They 

come  gradually  to  soberer  views  and  hopes.     Our  vanity 

and  self-love  and  romance  are  cut  in  upon  day  by  day : 

step  by  step  we  come  down,  but,  if  we  are  wise,  we  never 

give  up.     We  hold  on  steadfastly  still ;  we  try  to  do  our 

best.     The  painful  discipline   begins  early.     The  other 

day  I  was  at  our  sewing-school.     A  very  little  girl  came 

up  with  great  pride  to  show  me  her  work.     It  was  very 
23 


354  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

badly  done,  poor  little  thing.  I  tried  to  put  the  fact  as 
kindly  as  possible  ;  but  of  course  I  was  obliged  to  say  that 
the  sewing  was  not  quite  so  good  as  she  would  be  able  to 
do  some  day.  I  saw  the  eyes  fill  and  the  lips  quiver : 
there  were  mortification  and  disappointment  in  the  little 
heai't.  I  saw  the  temptation  to  be  petted,  to  throw  the 
work  aside  —  to  give  up.  But  better  thoughts  prevailed. 
She  felt  she  must  come  down.  She  went  away  silently 
to  her  place  and  patiently  tried  to  do  better.  Ah,  thought 
I  to  myself,  there  is  a  lesson  for  you. 

Let  me  now  think  of  intellectual  giving  up  and  com- 
ing down. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  a  thorough  blockhead  can  ever 
know  the  pain  of  intellectual  coming  down.  From  his 
first  schooldays  he  has  been  made  to  understand  that  he 
is  a  blockhead,  and  he  does  not  think  of  entering  him- 
self to  run  against  clever  men.  A  large  dray-horse  is 
saved  the  mortification  of  being  beaten  for  the  Derby ; 
for  he  does  not  propose  to  run  for  the  Derby.  The 
pain  of  intellectual  coming  down  is  felt  by  the  really 
clever  man,  who  is  made  to  feel  that  he  is  not  so  clever 
as  he  had  imagined  ;  that  whereas  he  had  fancied  him- 
self a  first-class  man,  he  is  no  more  than  a  third-class 
one ;  or  that,  even  though  he  be  a  man  of  good  ability, 
and  capable  of  doing  his  own  work  well,  there  are 
others  who  can  do  it  much  better  than  he.  You  would 
not  like,  my  clever  reader,  to  be  told  that  not  much  is 
expected  of  you  ;  that  no  one  supposes  that  you  can 
write,  ride,  walk,  or  leap  like  Smith.  There  was  some- 
thing that  touched  one  in  that  letter  which  Mr.  R.  H. 
Home  wrote  to  the  Times,  explaining  how  he  was  going 
away  to  Australia  because  his  poetry  was  neglected  and 
unappreciated.      What   slow,   painful   years   of  coming 


AND   COMING  DOWN.  355 

down  the  poet  must  have  gone  through  before  he  thus 
resolved  to  give  up.  I  never  read  Orion;  and  living 
among  simple  people,  I  never  knew  any  one  who  had 
read  the  work.  It  may  be  a  work  of  great  genius.  But 
the  poet  insisted  on  giving  up  when,  perhaps,  the  right 
rhino-  for  him  was  to  have  come  down.  Perhaps  he 
over-estimated  himself  and  his  poetry ;  perhaps  it  met 
all  the  notice  it  deserved. 

The  poet  stated,  in  his  published  letter,  that  his  writ- 
ings had  been  most  favourably  received  by  high-class 
critics ;  but  he  was  going  away  because  the  public 
treated  him  with  entire  neglect.  Nobody  read  him,  or 
cared  for  him,  or  talked  about  him.  '  And  what  did 
the  learned  world  say  to  your  paradoxes  ? '  asked  good 
Dr.  Primrose ;  but  his  son's  reply  was,  '  The  learned 
world  said  nothing  at  all  to  my  paradoxes.'  Such  ap- 
pears to  have  been  the  case  with  Mr.  Home ;  and  so  he 
grew  misanthropic,  and  shook  from  his  feet  the  dust  of 
Britain.  He  gave  up,  in  short ;  but  he  refused  to  come 
down.  And  no  doubt  it  is  easier  to  go  off  to  the  wilder- 
ness at  once  than  to  conclude  that  you  are  only  a  mid- 
dling man  after  having  long  regarded  yourself  as  a  great 
genius.  It  must  be  a  sad  thing  for  an  actor  who  came 
out  as  a  new  Kean,  to  gradually  make  up  his  mind  that 
he  is  just  a  respectable,  painstaking  person,  who  never 
will  draw  crowds  and  take  the  town  by  storm.  Many 
struggles  must  the  poor  barrister  know  before  he  comes 
down  from  trying  for  the  great  seal,  and  aims  at  being 
a  police  magistrate.  So  with  the  painter  ;  and  you 
remember  how  poor  Haydon  refused  to  come  down, 
and  desperately  gave  up.  It  cannot  be  denied  that,  to 
the  man  of  real  talent,  it  is  a  most  painful  trial  to  intel- 
lectually come  down  ;  and  that  trial  is  attended  with  a 


356  CONCERNING  GIVING   UP 

strong  temptation  to  give  up.  Really  clever  men  not 
unfrequently  have  a  quite  preposterous  estimate  of  their 
own  abilities  ;  and  many  takings  down  are  needful  to 
drive  them  out  of  that.  And  men  who  are  essentially 
middling  men  intellectually,  sometimes  have  first-class 
ambition  along  with  third-rate  powers ;  and  these  coming 
together  make  a  most  ill-matched  pair  of  legs,  which 
bear  a  human  being  very  awkwardly  along  his  path  in 
life,  and  expose  him  to  numberless  mortifications.  It  is 
hard  to  feel  any  deep  sympathy  for  such  men,  though 
their  sufferings  must  be  great.  And,  unhappily,  such 
men,  when  compelled  to  come  down,  not  unfrequently 
attempt  by  malicious  arts  to  pull  down  to  their  own  level 
those  to  whose  level  they  are  unable  to  rise.  I  have 
sometimes  fancied  one  could  almost  see  the  venomous 
vapours  coming  visibly  from  the  mouth  of  a  malignant, 
commonplace,  ambitious  man,  when  talking  of  one  more 
able  and  more  successful  than  himself. 

Possibly  social  coming  down  is  even  more  painful 
than  intellectual.  It  is  very  sad  to  see,  as  we  some- 
times do,  the  father  of  a  family  die,  and  his  children  in 
consequence  lose  their  grade  in  society.  I  do  not  mean, 
merely  to  have  to  move  to  a  smaller  house,  and  put 
down  their  carriage  ;  for  all  that  may  be  while  social 
position  remains  unchanged.  I  mean,  drop  out  of  the 
acquaintance  of  their  father's  friends  ;  fall  into  the  soci- 
ety of  coarse,  inferior  people  ;  be  addressed  on  a  tooting 
of  equality  by  persons  with  whom  they  have  no  feelings 
or  thoughts  in  common  ;  be  compelled  to  sordid  shifts 
and  menial  work  and  frowsy  chambers.  Threadbare 
carpets  and  rickety  chairs  often  indicate  privation  as 
extreme  as  shoeless  feet  and  a  coat  out  at  elbows.  We 
might  probably  smile  at  people  who  felt  the  painfullness 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  357 

of  coming  down,  because  obliged  to  pass  from  one  set  to 
another  in  the  society  of  some  little  country  town,  where 
the  second  circle   is   not  unfrequently   (to  a  stranger's 
view)  very  superior  to  the  first  in  appearance,  manners, 
and  means.     But  there  is  one  line  which  it  must  cost  a 
parent  real  anguish  to  make  up  his  mind  that  his  chil- 
dren are  to  fall  below   after  having   been    brought   up 
above  it :    I  mean  the  one  essentially  impassable  line  of 
society  —  the   line  which   parts  the  educated,  well-bred 
gentleman  from  the  man   who  is  not    such.     There    is 
something  terrible  about  that  giving  up.     And  how  such 
as   have  ever  known  it,  cling  to   the    upper  side  of  the 
line  of  demarcation.      We    have  all  seen    how    people 
work  and  pinch  and  screw  to  maintain  a  decent  appear- 
ance before  the  world,  while  things  were  bare  and  scanty 
enough  at  home.     And  it  is  an  honest  and  commendable 
pride  that   makes   the  poor  widow,  of  small  means  but 
with  the  training  and  feeling  of  a  lady,  determine  never 
to  give  up  the  notion  that  her  daughters  shall  be  ladies 
too.     It  need  not  be  said  that  such  a  determination  is 
not  at  all  inconsistent  with  the  most  stringent  economy 
or  the  most  resolute  industry  on  her  own   or  her  girls' 
part.     I  did  not  sympathize  with  a  letter  which  S.  G.  O. 
lately  published   in   the    Times,  in  which  he  urged   that 
people  with  no  more  than  three  hundred  a-year,  should 
at  once   resolve  to  send  their  daughters  out  as  menial 
servants,  instead  of  fighting  for  the  position  of  ladies  for 
them.     I   thought,  and   I  think,  that  that  letter  showed 
less  than  its  author's  usual  genial  feeling,  less  than  his 
usual  sound  sense.     Kind  and  judicious  men  will  prob- 
ably believe  that  a  good  man's  or  woman's  resistance  to 
social  coming  down,  and  especially  to  social  giving  up,  is 
deserving  of  all  respect  and  sympathy.     A  poor  clergy- 


358  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

man,  or  a  poor  military  man,  may  have  no  more  than 
three  hundred  a-year  ;  but  I  heartily  venerate  his  en- 
deavours to  preserve  his  girls  from  the  society  of  the  ser- 
vants' hall  and  the  delicate  attentions  of  Jeames.  The 
world  may  yet  think  differently,  and  manual  or  menial 
work  may  be  recognized  as  not  involving  social  giving 
up ;  but  meanwhile  the  step  is  a  vast  one,  between  the 
poorest  governess  and  the  plumpest  housemaid. 

A  painful  form  of  social  coming  down  falls  to  the  lot 
of  many  women  when  they  get  married.  I  suppose 
young  girls  generally  have  in  their  mind  a  glorified  ideal 
of  the  husband  whom  they  are  to  find  ;  wonderfully 
handsome,  wonderfully  clever,  very  kind  and  affection- 
ate, probably  very  rich  and  famous.  Sad  pressure  must 
be  put  upon  a  worthy  woman's  heart  before  she  can 
resolve  to  give  up  all  romantic  fancies,  and  marry  purely 
for  money.  There  must  be  sad  pressure  before  a  young 
girl  can  so  far  come  down  as  to  resolve  to  marry  some 
man  who  is  an  old  and  ugly  fool.  Yet  how  many  do  ! 
No  doubt,  reader,  you  have  sometimes  seen  couples  who 
were  paired,  but  not  matched  ;  a  beautiful  young  crea- 
ture tied  to  a  foul  old  satyr.  "Was  not  your  reflection, 
as  you  looked  at  the  poor  wife's  face,  '  Ah !  how 
wretchedly  you  must  have  come  down.'  And  even 
when  the  husband  is  really  a  good  old  man,  you  cannot 
but  think  how  different  he  is  from  the  fair  ideal  of  a 
girl's  first  fancy.  Before  making  up  her  mind  to  such  a 
partner  as  that,  the  young  woman  had  a  good  deal  to 
give  up.  And  probably  men,  if  of  an  imaginative  turn, 
have,  when  they  get  married,  to  come  down  a  good  deal 
too.  I  do  not  suppose  any  thing  about  the  clever  man's 
wife  but  what  is  very  good ;  but  surely,  she  is  not 
always  the  sympathetic,  admiring  companion  of  his  early 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  359 

visions.  Think  of  the  great  author,  walking  in  the  sum- 
mer fields,  and  saying  to  his  wife,  as  he  looked  at  the 
frisking  lamhs,  that  they  seemed  so  innocent  and  happy 
that  he  did  not  wonder  that  in  all  ages  the  lamb  has 
been  taken  as  the  emblem  of  happiness  and  innocence. 
Think  of  the  revulsion  in  his  mind  when  the  thoughtful 
lady  replied,  after  some  reflection,  '  Yes,  lamb  is  very 
nice,  especially  with  mint  sauce  ! '  The  great  man  had 
no  doubt  already  come  down  very  much  in  his  expecta- 
tion of  finding  in  his  wife  a  sympathetic  companion  ; 
but  after  that,  he  would  probably  give  up  altogether. 
Still,  it  is  possibly  less  painful  for  a  clever  man  to  find, 
as  years  go  on,  and  life  sobers  into  the  prosaic,  that  he 
must  come  down  sadly  in  his  ideas  of  the  happiness  of 
wedded  life,  than  it  is  for  such  a  man  fairly  to  give  up 
before  marriage,  making  up  his  mind  that  in  that  mat- 
ter, as  in  most  others,  men  must  be  content  with  what 
they  can  get,  though  it  be  very  inferior  to  what  they 
could  wish.  I  feel  a  great  disgust  for  what  may  be 
called  sentimentality ;  in  practical  life  sentimental  peo- 
ple, and  people  who  talk  sentimentally,  are  invariably 
fools  ;  still  it  appears  to  me  that  there  is  sober  truth  in 
the  following  lines,  which  I  remember  to  have  read 
somewhere  or  other,  though  the  truth  be  somewhat  sickly 
and  sentimentally  expressed  :  — 

'  And  as  the  dove,  to  far  Palmyra  flying, 

From  where  her  native  founts  of  Antioch  gleam 
Weary,  exhausted,  longing,  panting,  sighing, 
Lights  sadly  at  the  desert's  bitter  stream ; 

'  So  many  a  soul,  o'er  life's  drear  desert  faring,  — 

Love's  pure,  congenial  spring  unfound,  unquaffed,  — 
Suffers,  recoils,  then,  thirsty  and  despairing 

Of  what  it  would,  descends  and  sips  the  nearest  draught.' 


360  CONCERNING   GIVING  UP 

Most  people  find  it  painful  to  come  down  in  the  mat- 
ter of  growing  old.  Most  men  and  women  cling,  as 
long  as  may  be,  to  the  belief  that  they  are  still  quite 
young,  or  at  least  not  so  very  old.  Let  us  respect  the 
clinging  to  youth  :  there  seems  to  me  much  that  is  good 
in  it.  It  is  an  unconscious  testimony  to  the  depth  and 
universality  of  the  conviction  that,  as  time  goes  on,  we 
are  leaving  behind  us  the  more  guileless,  innocent,  and 
impressionable  season  of  our  life.  We  feel  little  sym- 
pathy, indeed,  for  the  silly  old  woman  who  affects  the 
airs  and  graces  of  a  girl  of  seventeen :  who  makes  her 
daughters  attire  themselves  like  children  when  they  are 
quite  grown  up  ;  and  who  renders  herself  ridiculous  in 
low  dresses  and  a  capless  head  when  her  head  is  half 
bald  and  her  shoulders  like  an  uncooked  plucked  fowl. 
That  is  downright  offensive  and  revolting.  And  to  see 
such  an  individual  surrounded  by  a  circle  of  young  lads 
to  whom  she  is  talking  in  a  buoyant  and  flirting  manner, 
is  as  melancholy  an  exhibition  of  human  folly  as  can 
anywhere  be  seen.  But  it  is  quite  a  different  thing 
when  man  or  woman,  thoughtful,  earnest,  and  pious,  sits 
down  and  muses  at  the  sight  of  the  first  gray  hairs. 
Here  is  the  slight  shadow,  we  think,  of  a  certain  great 
event  which  is  to  come  ;  here  is  the  earliest  touch  of  a 
chill  hand  which  must  prevail  at  length.  Here  is  man- 
ifest decay;  we  have  begun  to  die.  And  no  worthy 
human  being  will  pretend  that  this  is  other  than  a  very 
solemn  thought.  And  we  look  back  as  well  as  forward  : 
how  short  a  time  since  we  were  little  children,  and  kind 
hands  smoothed  down  the  locks  now  growing  scanty  and 
gray  !  You  cannot  recognize  in  the  glass,  when  you 
see  the  careworn,  anxious  face,  the  smooth  features  of 
the  careless  child.     You  feel  you  must  come  down  ;  you 


AND   COMING  DOWN.  361 

are  young  no  more !  Yet  you  know  by  what  shifts 
people  seek  in  this  respect  to  avoid  coming  down.  We 
postpone,  year  after  year,  the  point  at  which  people 
cease  to  be  young.  We  are  pleased  when  we  find  peo- 
ple talking  of  men  above  thirty  as  young  men.  Once, 
indeed,  Sir  Eobert  Peel  spoke  of  Lord  Derby  at  forty- 
five  as  a  man  in  "  the  buoyancy  of  youth."  Many  men 
of  five-and-forty  would  feel  a  secret  elation  as  they  read 
the  words  thus  employed.  The  present  writer  wants  a 
good  deal  yet  of  being  half-way  ;  yet  he  remembers 
how  much  obliged  he  felt  to  Mr.  Dickens  for  describing 
Tom  Pinch,  in  Martin  Chuzzlewit  (in  an  advertisement 
to  be  put  in  the  Times),  as  '  a  respectable  young  man, 
aged  thirty-five.'  You  remember  how  Sir  Bulwer  Lyt- 
ton,  as  he  has  himself  grown  older,  has  made  the  heroes 
of  his  novels  grow  older  pari  passu.  Many  years  ago 
his  romantic  heroes  were  lads  of  twenty  ;  now  they  are 
always  sentimental  men  of  fifty.  And  in  all  this  we 
can  trace  a  natural  conviction  of  the  intellect,  as  well 
as  the  natural  disinclination  in  any  respect  to  come  down. 
For  youth,  with  all  its  folly,  is  by  common  consent  re- 
garded as  a  better  thing  than  age,  with  all  its  experi- 
ence :  and  thus  to  grow  old  is  regarded  as  coming  down. 
And  there  is  something  very  touching,  something  to  be 
respected  and  sympathized  with  by  all  people  in  the 
vigour  of  life,  in  the  fashion  in  which  men  who  have 
come  down  so  far  as  to  admit  that  they  have  grown  old, 
refuse  to  give  up  by  admitting  that  they  are  past  their 
work ;  and,  indeed,  persist  in  maintaining,  after  fifty 
years  in  the  church  or  thirty  on  the  bench,  that  they 
are  as  strong  as  ever.  Let  us  reverence  the  old  man. 
Let  us  help  him  in  his  determination  not  to  give  up. 
Let  us  lighten  his  burden  when  we  can  do  so,  and  then 


362  CONCERNING   GIVING  UP 

give  him  credit  for  bearing  it  all  himself.  If  there  be 
one  respect  in  which  it  is  especially  interesting  and 
respectable  when  a  man  refuses  to  give  up  at  any  price, 
and  indeed  is  most  unwilling  to  come  down,  it  is  in 
regard  of  useful,  honest  labor  in  the  service  of  God  and 
man.  Sometimes  the  unwillingness  to  come  down  in 
any  degree  is  amusing,  and  almost  provoking.  I  re- 
member once,  coming  down  a  long  flight  of  steps  from 
a  railway  station,  I  saw  a  venerable  dignitary  of  the 
church,  who  had  served  it  for  more  than  sixty  years, 
coming  down  with  difficulty,  and  clinging  to  the  railing. 
Now,  what  I  ought  to  have  done  was,  to  remain  out  of 
his  view,  and  see  that  he  got  safely  down  without  mak- 
ing him  aware  that  I  was  watching  him.  But  I  hastily 
went  up  to  him  and  begged  him  to  take  my  arm,  as  the 
stair  was  so  slippery  and  steep.  I  think  I  see  the  indig- 
nation of  the  good  man's  look.  '  I  assure  you,'  he 
replied,  '  my  friend,  I  am  quite  as  able  to  walk  down 
the  steps  alone  as  you  are ! ' 

Apart  from  the  more  dignifled  regrets  which  accompany 
the  coming  down  of  growing  old,  there  are  petty  mortifi- 
cations which  vain  people  will  feel  as  they  are  obliged  to 
come  down  in  their  views  as  to  their  personal  appearance. 
As  a  man's  hair  falls  off,  as  he  grows  unwieldily  stout,  as 
he  comes  to  blow  like  a  porpoise  in  ascending  a  hill,  as 
his  voice  cracks  when  he  tries  to  sing,  he  is  obliged  step 
by  step  to  come  down.  I  heartily  despise  the  contemp- 
tible  creature  who  refuses  to  come  down  when  nature-  bids 
him  :  who  dyes  his  hair  and  his  moustache,  rouges  his 
fiirr,  wear-  stays,  and  pads  out  his  chest.  Yet  more  dis- 
gusting is  the  made-up  old  reprobate  when,  padded,  rouged, 
and  dyed,  a-  already  -aid.  he  mingles  in  a  circle  of  fast 
young  men,  and  disgusts  even  them  by  the  foul  pruriency 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  363 

of  his  talk.  Kick  him  out,  muscular  Christian  !  Tell 
him  what  you  think  of  him,  and  see  how  the  despicable 
wretch  will  cower !  But  while  this  refusing  to  come 
gracefully  clown  as  to  physical  aspect  with  advancing 
time  is  thoroughly  abominable,  let  it  be  remembered  that 
even  in  this  matter  the  judicious  man  will  not  give  up, 
though  he  will  come  down.  Don't  grow  slovenly  and 
careless  as  you  grow  old.  Be  scrupulously  neat  and  tidy 
in  dress.  It  is  a  pleasant  sight  —  pleasant  like  the  trimly 
raked  field  of  autumn  —  the  speckless,  trim,  white  neck- 
clothed,  well-dressed  old  man. 

That  we  may  wisely  come  down,  we  need  frequently 
to  be  reminded  that  we  ought  to  do  so.  We  need,  in  fact, 
a  good  many  takings  down  as  we  go  on  through  life,  or  we 
should  all  become  insufferable.  I  speak  of  ordinary  men. 
The  old  vanity  keeps  growing  up  ;  and  like  the  grass  of 
a  lawn,  it  needs  to  be  often  mown  down  ;  and  however 
frequently  and  closely  it  is  mown,  there  will  always  (as 
with  the  lawn)  be  quite  enough  of  it.  You  meet  with 
some  wholesome,  mortifying  lesson ;  you  feel  you  must 
come  down ;  and  you  do.  You  think  humbly  and  reason- 
ably of  yourself  for  a  while.  But  the  grass  is  growing 
again :  your  self-estimation  is  getting  up  again ;  you  are 
beginning  to  think  yourself  very  clever,  great,  and  emi- 
nent, when  some  rude  shock  undeceives  you.  You  are 
roughly  compelled  to  think  of  yourself  more  meekly. 
You  find  that  in  the  general  judgment  you  are  no  great 
author,  artist,  actor,  cricket-player,  shot,  essay  writer, 
preacher.  You  are  so  mortified  that  you  think  you  may 
at  once  give  up ;  but,  after  deliberating,  you  resolve  that 
you  will  only  come  down. 

Great  men  have  no  doubt  given  up  ;  but  it  was  either 
in  some  time  of  morbid  depression,  or  when  it  was  really 


364  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

unavoidable  that  they  should  do  so.  Pitt  gave  up  when 
on  his  dying-bed  he  heard  of  several  great  victories  of  the 
First  Napoleon;  and,  crying  out  with  his  blackening  lips. 
'  Roll  up  the  map  of  Europe,'  turned  his  face  to  the  wall 
and  never  spoke  more.  Sir  Robert  Peel  gave  up,  when 
he  tendered  to  the  queen  his  final  resignation  of  office. 
When  the  queen  asked  him  if  there  was  nothing  he  could 
wish  her  to  do  in  testimony  of  her  regard  for  him,  his 
answer  was  —  '  Only  that  jour  majesty  would  never  call 
me  to  your  counsels  again  ! '  What  a  giving  up  for  that 
ambitious  man  !  Notwithstanding  what  has  already  been 
said  in  this  essay,  I  am  not,  on  reflection,  sure  that  Mari- 
us  had  given  up,  or  even  come  down,  when  he  sat,  in  his 
lowest  depression  of  fortune,  amid  the  ruins  of  Carthage. 
Gelimer  had  finally  given  up  when  he  was  carried  as  a 
captive  in  the  Roman  triumph,  looking  with  a  smile  upon 
all  the  pomp  of  the  grand  procession,  and  often  exclaim- 
ing, '  Vanity,  vanity  :  all  is  vanity  ! '  But  Diocletian, 
busy  among  his  cabbages,  interested  and  content  though 
the  purple  had  been  filing  aside,  had  neither  given  up 
nor  come  down.  Nor  had  Charles  V.  done  either  in 
that  beautiful  retreat  which  Mr.  Stirling  has  so  grace- 
fully  described.  There  was  no  coming  down  there, 
in  the  loss  of  self-estimation ;  there  was  no  giving  up, 
in  the  bitter  and  despairing  sense,  when  the  greatest 
monarch  of  the  great  sixteenth  century,  in  his  greatest 
eminence,  calmly  laid  down  the  cares  of  royalty,  that  in  his 
last  days  he  might  enjoy  quiet,  and  have  space  in  which 
to  prepare  for  the  other  world.  It  was  only  that  '  the 
royal  eagle  would  rest  his  weary  wings.' 

But  we  have  all  known  very  small  men  who  were 
always  ready  to  give  up,  rather  than  that  their  silly  vanity 
should  be  mortified  by  any  degree  of  coming  down.     We 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  365 

have  all  known  cases  highly  analogous  to  that  of  the  lit- 
tle child  who  threw  away  his  bread  and  butter,  because 
he  could  not  have  jelly  too.  I  dare  say,  my  reader,  you 
may  have  seen  a  man  who  if  be  were  not  allowed  to  be 
the  first  man  in  some  little  company,  the  only  talker,  the 
only  singer,  the  only  philosopher,  cr  the  only  jack-pud- 
ding, would  give  up,  and  sit  entirely  silent.  In  his  own 
small  way,  he  must  be  aut  Ccesar  aut  nullus.  A  rival 
talker,  singer,  or  mountebank,  turns  him  pale  with  envy 
and  wrath.  Of  course,  all  this  founds  on  extreme  pet- 
tiness of  character,  co-existing  with  inordinate  vanity 
and  silliness.  And  it  is  an  offence  which  is  its  own  se- 
vere punishment.  The  petty  sin  whips  itself  with  a  sting- 
ing scourge  of  pack-thread. 

I  have  sometimes  thought  that  it  is  a  remarkable  thing, 
how  very  quickly  human  beings  can  quite  give  up.     An 
entire  revolution  may  pass  in  a  few  hours,  perhaps  in  a  few 
minutes,  upon  our  whole  estimate  of  things.     I  should 
judge  that  a  soldier,  charging  some  perilous  position  in  a 
delirium  of  excitement,  and  fancying  military  glory  the 
sublimest   thing  in   life ;  if  he   suddenly  be  disabled  by 
some  ghastly  wound,  and  is  borne  away  to  the  rear  deadly 
sick,  fevered,   and   wrung   with   agony,   would    give   up 
many  notions  which  he  had  cherished  before.    But  I  have 
been  especially  struck  by  witnessing  how  fast  men  can 
resign  themselves  to  the  last  and  largest  giving  up  :  how 
quickly  they  can  make  up  their  mind  that  they  are  dying, 
and  that  all  will  be  over  in  two  or  three  hours.     A  man 
stricken  with  cholera  at  morning,  and  gone  before  night, 
has  not  the  feeling  that  his    death  is   sudden.     When 
eternity  comes  very  near,  this  world  and  all  its  concerns 
are  speedily  discerned  as  little  more  than  shadows.     We 
give  up  quickly,  and  with  little  effort,  all  those  things  and 


366  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

fancies  and  opinions  to  which  we  clung  very  closely  in 
health  and  life.  The  dying  man  feels  that  to  him  these 
are  not.  A  Christian  man,  busy  in  the  morning  at  his 
usual  work,  and  smitten  down  at  midday  by  some  fatal 
disease  or  accident,  could  be  quite  resigned  to  die  at 
evening.  He  may  have  had  a  hundred  plans  in  his  mind 
at  daybreak :  but  it  would  cost  him  little  effort  to  give 
them  all  up.  And  but  for  the  dear  ones  he  must 
leave  behind,  a  very  short  time  would  suffice  to  resign 
a  pious  man  to  the  Nunc  dimittis.  We  grow  accus- 
tomed, wonderfully  fast,  to  the  most  new  and  surprising 
things. 

But  returning  to  matters  less  solemn,  let  me  sum  up 
what  has  been  said  so  far,  by  repeating  my  grand  princi- 
ple, that  in  most  cases  the  wise  and  good  man  will  come 
down,  but  never  give  up.  The  heroic  thing  to  say  is  this  : 
Things  are  bad,  but  they  may  be  worse  ;  and  with  God's 
blessing  I  shall  try  to  make  them  better.  Who  does  not 
know  that  by  resolute  adherence  to  this  principle,  many 
battles  have  been  won  after  they  had  been  lost  ?  Don't  the 
French  say  that  the  English  have  conquered  on  many 
fields  because  they  did  not  know  when  they  had  been 
beaten  ;  in  short,  because  they  would  never  give  up  ? 
Pluck  is  a  great  quality.  Let  us  respect  it  everywhere ; 
at  least,  wherever  enlisted  on  the  side  of  right.  Ugly  is 
the  bull-dog,  and  indeed  blackguard-looking :  but  I  ad- 
mire one  thing  about  it :  it  will  never  give  up.  And 
splendid  success  has  often  come  at  length  to  the  man  who 
fought  on  through  failure,  hoping  against  hope.  Mr. 
Disraeli  might  well  have  given  up  after  his  first  speech 
in  the  House  of  Commons  :  many  men  would  never  have 
opened  their  lips  there  again.  J  declare  I  feel  something 
sublime  in  that  defiant    The  day  'will  come  when  you  will 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  367 

be   glad  to  hear   me,    when  we  read  it  by  the  light  of 
after    events.      Of    course,    only    extraordinary   success 
could  justify  the  words.      They  might  have  been    the 
vapouring   of  a  conceited    fool.     Galileo,  compelled  to 
appear  to  come  down,  did  not  give  up:  Still  it  moves. 
The  great  nonconformist  preacher,   Robert   Hall,  fairly 
broke  down  in  his  first  attempt  to  preach  ;  but  he  did  not 
give  up.     Mr.  Tennyson  might  have  given  up,  had  he 
been  disheartened  by  the  sharp  reviews  of  his  earliest  vol- 
ume.   George  Stephenson  might  also  have  given  up,  w7hen 
his  railway  and  his  locomotive  were  laughed  out  of  the 
parliamentary  committee.     Mr.  Thackeray  might  have 
given  up,  when  the  publishers  refused  to  have  anything  to 
do  with  Vanity  Fair.    The  first  articles  of  men  who  have 
become    most   successful    periodical  writers,   have  been 
consigned  to  the  Balaam-box.    Possibly  this  was  in  some 
measure   the  cause  of  their  success.     It  taught  them  to 
take  more    pains.     It   was  a  taking  down.     It   showed 
them  that  their  task  was  not  so  easy  :  if  they  would  suc- 
ceed, they  must  do  their  very  best.     And  if  they  had 
stamina  to  resolve  that  though  taken  down  they  would 
not  give  up,  the  early  disappointment  was  an  excellent 
discipline.     I  have  known  students  at  college  whose  suc- 
cess in  carrying  off*  honors  was  unexampled,  who  in  their 
first  one  or  two  competitions  were  ignominiously  beaten. 
Some  would    have  given  up.      They  only  came  down  : 
then    they  went  at  their  work  with  a  will ;    and  never 
were  beaten  more. 

The  man  who  is  most  likely  to  give  up,  is  the  man 
who  foolishly  refuses  to  come  down.  Every  human 
being  (excepting  men  like  Shakspeare)  must  do  either 
the  one  thing  or  the  other  at  many  points  in  their  life: 
and  the  latter  is  the  safer  thing,  and  will  save  from  the 


.368  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

former.  It  is  the  milder  form  of  that  suffering  which 
follows  disappointment  and  mortification.  It  is  to  the 
other  as  cow-pox  to  small-pox:  by  submitting  to  pass 
through  many  comings  down,  you  will  escape  the  sad 
misery  of  many  givings  up.  Yet  even  vaccination,  when 
it  takes  full  effect,  though  much  less  serious  than  small- 
pox, is  a  painful  and  disagreeable  thing  :  and  in  like  man- 
ner, coming  down  in  any  way,  socially,  intellectually, 
physically,  morally,  is  an  infliction  so  painful,  that  men 
have  devised  various  arts  by  which  to  escape  coming 
down  at  all.  The  great  way  to  escape  intellectual  com- 
ing down,  is  to  hold  that  men  will  not  do  you  justice ; 
that  the  reviewers  have  conspired  against  you  ;  that  the 
anonymous  assassins  of  the  press  stab  you  out  of  malig- 
nity and  envy ;  that  you  are  an  unappreciated  genius ; 
and  that  if  your  powers  were  only  known,  you  would  be 
universally  recognized  as  a  very  great  man.  When  you 
preach,  the  people  fall  asleep :  but  that  is  because  the 
people  are  stupid,  not  because  your  sermons  are  dull. 
When  you  send  an  article  to  a  magazine,  it  is  rejected: 
that  is  not  because  the  article  is  bad,  but  because  the 
editor  is  a  fool.  You  write  a  book,  and  nobody  reads  it ; 
it  is  because  the  book  is  carelessly  printed,  and  the  pub- 
lisher devoid  of  energy.  You  paint  a  picture,  and  every- 
body laughs  at  it ;  it  is  because  the  taste  of  the  age  is  low. 
You  write  a  prize  essay,  and  don't  get  the  prize ;  it  is  be- 
cause  the  judges  had  an  objection  to  sound  doctrine.  And 
indeed  there  have  been  great  men  to  whom  their  own  age 
did  injustice  ;  and  you  may  be  one  of  these.  It  is  highly 
probable  that  you  are  not.  It  is  highly  probable  that 
your  mark  is  gauged  pretty  fairly ;  no  doubt  it  is  lower 
than  you  think  right :  but  it  is  best  to  come  down  to  it. 
It  is  but  a  foolish  world,  and  it  will  not  last  long;  and 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  369 

there  are  things  more  excellent  than  even  to  be  a  very 
clever  man,  and  to  be  recognized  as  such.  It  is  curious 
how  men  soothe  themselves  and  avoid  coming  down,  or 
mitigate  the  pain  of  doing  so,  by  secretly  cherishing  the 
belief  that  in  some  one  little  respect  they  are  different 
from,  and  higher  than,  all  the  rest  of  their  kind.  And  it 
is  wonderful  how  such  a  reflection  has  power  to  break 
one's  fall,  so  to  speak.  You  don't  much  mind  being  only 
a  commonplace  man  in  all  other  respects,  if  only  there 
be  one  respect  in  which  you  can  fondly  believe  you  are 
superior  to  everybody  else.  A  very  little  thing  will  suf- 
fice. A  man  is  taller  than  anybody  else  in  the  town  or 
parish ;  he  has  longer  hair  ;  he  can  walk  faster ;  he  is 
the  first  person  who  ever  crossed  the  new  bridge  ;  when 
the  queen  passed  near  she  bowed  to  him  individually  ; 
he  was  the  earliest  in  the  neighbourhood  who  got  the 
perforated  postage  stamps ;  he  has  the  swiftest  horse  in 
the  district ;  he  has  the  largest  cabbages ;  he  has  the  old- 
est watch :  one  Smith  spells  his  name  as  no  other  Smith 
was  ever  known  to  do.  It  is  quite  wonderful  how  far  it 
is  possible  for  men  to  find  reason  for  cherishing  in  their 
heart  a  deep-seated  belief,  that  in  something  or  other 
they  stand  on  a  higher  platform  than  all  the  remainder 
of  mankind.  Few  men  live,  who  do  not  imagine  that  in 
some  respect  they  stand  alone  in  the  world,  or  stand  first. 
I  have  seen  people  quite  proud  of  the  unexampled  dis- 
ease under  which  they  were  suffering.  It  was  none  of 
the  common  maladies  that  the  people  round  about  suf- 
fered from.  I  have  known  a  country  woman  boast, 
with  undisguised  elation,  that  the  doctor  had  more  diffi- 
culty in  pulling  out  her  tooth,  than  he  ever  before  had  in 
the  case  of  mortal  man.  There  is  not  a  little  country 
parish  in  Britain,  but  its  population  are  persuaded  that  in 

24 


370  CONCERNING   GIVING  UP 

several  respects  and  for  several  reasons,  it  is  quite  the 
most  important  in  the  empire. 

There  is  an  expedient  not  uncommonly  employed  by 
men  to  lessen  their  mortification  when  obliged  to  come 
down,  which  may  possibly  be  effectual  as  a  salve  to 
wounded  vanity,  but  which  is  in  the  last  degree  misera- 
ble and  contemptible.  It  consists  in  endeavouring  to 
bring  everybody  else  down  along  with  you.  A  man  is 
unpopular  as  a  preacher ;  he  endeavours  to  disseminate 
the  notion  that  the  clergyman  of  the  next  parish  is  un- 
popular too,  and  that  the  current  reports  about  his 
church  being  overcrowded,  are  gross  exaggerations. 
A  man  has  a  very  small  practice  as  a  physician  ;  he 
assures  an  inquiring  stranger  that  Dr.  Mimpson,  who 
(eveiybody  says)  makes  fourteen  thousand  a-year,  does 
not  really  make  fourteen  hundred.  A  man's  horses  are 
always  lame  ;  he  tells  you  malignantly  that  he  knows 
privately,  that  the  fine  pair  which  Smith  drives  in  his 
drag,  are  very  groggy,  and  require  to  be  shod  with 
leather.  Now  I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  there  is  any 
essential  malignity  in  a  man's  feeling  comfort,  when 
obliged  to  come  down  himself,  in  the  reflection  that  other 
men  have  had  to  come  down  too ;  and  that  after  coming 
lown  he  still  stands  on  the  same  level  with  multitudes 
more.  It  is  a  natural  thine;  to  find  a  certain  degree  of 
consolation  in  such  reflections.  Notwithstanding  what 
Milton  says  to  the  contrary,  there  is  no  doubt  at  all  that 
'  fellowship  in  pain  '  does  '  divide  smart.'  If  you  were 
the  only  bald  man  in  the  world,  or  the  only  lame  man,  or 
the  only  man  who  had  lost  several  teeth,  you  would  find 
it  much  harder  to  resign  your  mind  to  your  condition ;  in 
brief,  to  come  down  to  it.  There  is  real  and  substantial 
mitigation  of  all  human  ills  and  mortitications  in  the  sight 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  371 

of  others  as  badly  off.  To  fall  on  the  ice  along  with 
twenty  more  is  no  great  matter,  unless  indeed  the  physi- 
cal suffering  be  great.  To  be  guillotined  as  one  of  fifty 
is  not  nearly  so  bad  as  to  go  all  alone.  To  be  beaten  in 
a  competition  along  with  half  a  dozen  very  clever  fellows 
mitigates  your  mortification.  The  poor  fellow,  plucked 
for  his  degree,  is  a  little  cheered  up  when  he  goes  out 
for  a  walk  with  three  other  men  who  have  been  plucked 
along  with  him.  Napoleon,  standing  before  a  picture 
in  which  Alexander  the  Great  was  a  figure,  evinced  a 
pleasing  touch  of  nature  when  he  said  repeatedly,  '  Alex- 
ander was  smaller  than  me  ;  much  smaller.'  The  thing 
which  I  condemn  is  not  that  the  man  who  has  come  down 
should  look  around  with  pleasure  on  his  brethren  in  mis- 
fortune, but  that  the  man  who  has  come  down  should 
seek  to  pull  down  to  his  own  level  those  whom  in  his 
secret  soul  he  knows  stand  on  a  higher.  What  I  con- 
demn is  envious  and  malignant  detraction,  with  its  train 
of  wilful  misrepresentation,  sly  innuendoes,  depreciating 
shrugs  and  nods.  I  hate  to  hear  a  man  speaking  in 
terms  of  faint  praise  of  another  who  has  outstripped  him 
in  their  common  profession,  saying  that  he  is  '  rather  a 
clever  lad,'  that  he  '  really  has  some  talent,'  that  he  is 
'  not  wholly  devoid  of  power,'  that  he  '  has  done  better 
than  could  be  expected,'  and  the  like.  Very  contempti- 
ble is  a  method  of  depreciation  which  I  have  often  wit- 
nessed. It  consists  in  asserting  that  Mi\  A.,  whom  every- 
body knows  for  a  very  ordinary  man,  is  far  superior  to 
Mr.  B.,  whom  you  are  commending  as  a  man  of  superior 
parts.  I  remember  a  certain  public  meeting.  Dr.  C. 
made  a  most  brilliant  and  stirring  speech  ;  Dr.  D.  fol- 
lowed in  a  very  dull  one ;  Mr.  E.  next  made  a  decent 
one.    After  the  meeting  was  over,  the  envious  E.  thought 


372  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

to  take  down  C,  and  cover  his  own  coming  down,  by  walk- 
ing up  to  D.,  and  in  a  very  marked  manner,  in  the  presence 
of  C,  congratulating  D.  on  having  made  the  speech  of  the 
evening.  Oh,  that  we  could  all  learn  to  acknowledge 
with  frankness  and  heartiness  the  merit  that  overtops  us  ! 
Don't  let  us  try  to  pull  it  down.  Read  with  pleasure  the 
essay  which  you  feel  is  far  better  than  you  could  have 
written :  listen  with  improvement  to  the  sermon  which 
you  feel  is  far  better  than  you  could  have  preached.  I 
think  envy  is  a  distant  feeling.  In  a  true  heart  it  cannot 
live  when  you  have  come  to  know  the  envied  man  well. 
It  is  in  our  nature  to  like  the  man  that  surpassed  us  when 
we  come  to  know  him.  Perhaps  it  is  impossible  to  look  at 
merit  or  success  in  our  own  peculiar  line  without  mak- 
ing an  involuntary  comparison  between  these  and  our 
own.  Perhaps  it  is  natural  to  fancy  that  our  great 
doings  have  hardly,  as  yet,  met  the  appreciation  they 
deserved.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  it  is  natural,  except 
in  men  of  very  bad  natures,  to  cherish  any  other  feeling 
than  a  kindly  one  towards  the  man  whose  powers  are 
so  superior  to  ours,  that  with  hardly  an  apparent  effort 
he  beats  us,  far  as  Eclipse  beat  his  compeers,  in  the 
especial  walk  of  our  own  tastes  and  talents,  when  we 
have  done  our  most  laborious  and  our  best. 

It  is  oftentimes  a  real  kindness  to  assure  a  man,  though 
not  quite  truly,  that  he  is  not  coming  down.  It  may  tend 
to  keep  him  from  giving  up.  Very  transparent  decep- 
tions sometimes  suffice  to  deceive  us.  You  remember 
how  Dr.  Johnson,  when  he  was  breaking  up  in  the  last 
weeks  of  his  long  life,  felt  very  indignant  at  any  one  who 
told  him  that  in  health  and  strength  he  was  coming  down. 
Once,  when  the  good  man  was  tottering  on  the  verge  of 
the  grave,  a  new  acquaintance  said  to  him,  '  Ah,  doctor, 


AND   COMING  DOWN.  373 

I  see  the  glow  of  health  returning  to  your  cheek : '  where- 
upon Johnson  grasped  his  hand  warmly,  and  said,  '  God 
bless  you  :  you  are  the  kindest  friend  I  ever  had  ! '  If 
you,  benevolent  reader,  wish  to  do  a  kindness,  and  to 
elicit  a  grateful  feeling,  go  and  tell  a  man  who  is  growing 
bald  that  his  hair  is  getting  thicker  :  tell  a  man  of  seventy 
that  he  is  every  day  looking  younger :  tell  a  man  who 
can  now  walk  but  at  a  slow  pace  that  he  walks  uncom- 
monly fast :  tell  a  middle-aged  lady  whose  voice  is  crack- 
ing, that  it  is  always  growing  finer :  tell  a  cottager  who  is 
proud  of  his  garden,  about  the  middle  of  October,  that 
his  garden  is  looking  more  blooming  than  in  June :  tell 
the  poor  artisan,  the  skilled  workman,  who  has  been  driv- 
en by  want  of  work  to  take  to  breaking  stones  for  the 
road  (which  in  the  Scotch  mind  holds  the  place  which 
sweeping  a  crossing  holds  in  the  English)  that  you  are 
pleased  to  see  he  has  got  nice  light  work  for  these 
winter  days ;  and  if  you  be  the  parish  clergyman,  stop 
for  a  few  minutes  and  talk  cheerfully  to  him  :  if  you 
passed  that  poor  down-hearted  fellow  to-day  with  only  a 
slight  recognition,  he  would  certainly  fancy  (with  the  in- 
genious self-torment  of  fallen  fortunes)  that  you  did  it 
because  he  has  been  obliged  so  sadly  to  come  down.  But 
if  you  want  to  prove  yourself  devoid  of  the  instinctive 
benevolence  of  the  gentleman,  you  will  walk  up  to  the 
man  with  a  look  of  mingled  grief  and  astonishment,  and 
say, '  O,  John,  I  am  sorry  to  see  you  have  come  to  this  ! ' 
I  have  seen  the  like  done.  I  have  known  people  who, 
not  from  malignity,  but  from  pure  stolidity  and  coarse- 
ness of  nature,  would  insist  on  impressing  on  the  man's 
mind  how  far  he  had  come  down.  Gelimer  at  Rome  (or 
Constantinople,  I  forget  which)  did  not  feel  his  fall  more 
than  the  decent  Scotch   carpenter  or  mason  busy  at  his 


374  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

heap  of  stones   by  the    roadside.     And   who,    that  had 
either  heart  or  head,  but  would  rather  try  to  keep  him  up, 
than  to  take   him  further  down?     It  is  the  delicate   dis- 
cernment of  these  things  that  marks  the  gentleman  and 
the  gentlewoman.     Such  instinctively  shrink  from  saying 
or  doing  a  thing  that  will  pain  the  feelings  of  another  :  if 
they  say  or  do  anything  of  the   kind,  it  is  not  because 
they  don't  know   what  they  are  about.      While  vulgar 
people  go    through    life,  unintentionally  and   ignorantly 
sticking  pins  into  more  sensitive  natures  at   every  turn. 
You,  my  friend,  accidentally  meet  an  old  school  compan- 
ion.    You  think  him  a  low  looking  fellow  as  could  well  be 
seen.     But  you  say  to  him  kindly  that  you  are  happy  to 
see  him  looking  so  well.     He  replies  to  you,  with  a  con- 
founded candour,  '  I  cannot  say  that  of  you  ;  you  are  look- 
ing very  old  and  careworn.'     The  boor  did  not  mean  to 
say  anything  disagreeable.     It  was  pure  want  of  discern- 
ment.    It  was  simply  that  he  is  not   a  gentleman,  and 
never  can  now  be   made  one.      '  Your  daughter,  poor 
thing,  is  getting  hardly  any  partners,'  said  a  vulgar  rich 
woman  to  an  old  lady  in  a  ball-room:  'it  is  really  very 
bad  of  the  young  men.'     The  vulgar  rich  woman  fancied 
she  was  making  a  kind  and  sympathetic  remark.     It  is 
to  be   recorded   that  sometimes  such  remarks  have  their 
origin  not  in  ignorance  but  in  intentional  malignity.     Mr. 
Snarling,  of  this  neighbourhood,  deals  in  such.     He  sees 
a  man  looking  cheerful  after  dinner,  and  laughing   heart- 
ily.    Mr.  Snarling  exclaims,  '  Bless  me,  how  flushed  you 
arc    getting!       Did    any  of  your   relations    die   of   apo- 
plexy?'    If  you  should  cough  in  the  unhappy  wretch's 
presence,  he  will  ask,  with  an  anxious  look,  if  there  is 
consumption    in  your  family.     And  he  will  receive  your 
negative  answer  with  an  ominous  shake  of  his  head.     'I 


AND   COMING  DOWN.  375 

am  sorry  to  hear,'  says  Mr.  Snarling,  the  week  after  your 
new  horse  comes  home,  '  I  am  sorry  to  hear  about  that 
animal  proving  such  a  bad  bargain.  I  was  sure  the  dealer 
would  cheat  you.'  '  It  was  very  sad  indeed,'  says  Mr. 
Snarling,  '  that  you  could  not  get  that  parish  which  you 
wanted.'  He  shakes  his  head,  and  kindly  adds,  '  Espe- 
cially, as  you  were  so  very  anxious  to  get  it.'  '  I  read  the 
December  number  of  Fraser '  (in  which  you  have  an  ar- 
ticle), says  the  fellow,  'and  of  all  the  contemptible  rub- 
bish that  ever  was  printed,  that  was  decidedly  the  worst.' 
You  cannot  refrain  from  the  retort,  '  Yes,  it  was  very 
stupid  of  the  editor  to  refuse  that  article  you  sent  him  :  it 
would  have  raised  the  character  of  the  magazine.'  Snarl- 
ing's  face  grows  blue :  he  was  not  aware  that  you  knew 
so  much.  Never  mind  poor  Snarling :  he  punishes  him- 
self very  severely.  Only  a  man  who  is  very  unhappy 
himself  will  go  about  doing  all  he  can  to  make  others  un- 
happy. And  gradually  Snarling  is  understood,  and  then 
Snarling  is  shunned. 

I  trust  that  none  of  my  readers  have  in  them  anything 
of  the  snarling  spirit ;  but  I  doubt  not  that  even  the 
best-natured  of  them  have  occasionally  met  with  human 
beings  who  were  blown  up  with  vanity  and  conceit  to  a 
degree  so  thoroughly  intolerable,  that  it  would  have  been 
felt  as  an  unspeakable  privilege  to  be  permitted  (so  to 
speak)  to  stick  a  skewer  into  the  great  inflated  wind-bag, 
and  to  take  the  individual  several  pegs  down.  It  is  fit  and 
pleasing  that  a  man  in  any  walk  of  life  should  magnify  his 
office,  and  be  pleased  with  his  own  proficiency  in  its  du- 
ties. One  likes  to  see  that.  The  man  will  be  the  hap- 
pier, and  will  go  through  his  work  the  better.  But  the 
irritating  thing  is  to  find  a  human  being  who  will  talk  of 
nothing  whatsoever  except  himself,  and  his  own  doings 
and  importance ;  who  plainly  shows  that  he  feels  not  the 


37 G  CONCERNING  GIVING  UP 

least  interest  in  any  other  topic  of  discourse ;  and  who  is 
ever  trying  to  bring  back  the  conversation  to  number  one. 
I  have  at  this  moment  in  my  mind's  eye  a  man,  a  woman, 
and  a  lad,  in  each  of  whom  conceit  appears  to  a  degree 
which  I  never  saw  paralleled  elsewhere.     When  you  look 
at  or  listen  to  any  one  of  them,  the  analogy  to  the  blown- 
up  bladder  instantly  suggests  itself.    They  are  very  much 
alike  in  several  respects.  They  are  not  ill-natured  :  though 
very  commonplace,  they  are  not  utter  blockheads :  their 
great  characteristic  is   self-complacency  so  stolid  that  it 
never  will   see  reason  to   come    down ;    and   so  pachy- 
dermatous   that    it  will    be  unaware  of   any  gentle  ef- 
fort to  take   it  down.     There    is  a    beautiful  equanim- 
ity about  the  thorough  dunce.      He   is  so    completely 
stupid,  that  he  never  for  an  instant  suspects  that  he  is 
stupid  at  all.     He  never  feels  any  necessity  to  intel- 
lectually come  down.     A  clever  man  has  many  fears  that 
his  powers  are  but  small,  but  your  entire  booby  knows  no 
such  fear.     The  clever  man  can  appreciate,  when   done 
by  another,  that  which  he  could  not  have  done  himself: 
and  he  is  able  to  make  many  comparisons  which  take  him 
down.     But  there  are  men,  who  could  read  a  sermon  of 
their  own,  and  then  a  sermon  by  the  bishop  of  Oxford, 
and  see  no  great  difference  between  the  two. 

And  now,  kindly  reader,  we  have  arrived  at  the  end  of 
the  six  long  slips  of  paper,  and  this  essay  approaches  its 
close.  Let  me  say,  before  laying  down  the  pen,  that  it  is 
for  commonplace  people  I  write,  when  I  advise  those  who 
look  at  these  pages  to  come  down  intellectually  to  the 
mark  fixed  for  them  by  their  fellow-creatures  —  to  believe 
that  they  are  estimated  pretty  fairly,  and  appreciated 
much  as  they  deserve.  You  and  I,  my  friend,  may  pos- 
sibly have  fancied,  once  upon  a  time,  that  we  were  great 
and    remarkable   men ;    but  many   takings    down    have 


AND  COMING  DOWN.  377 

taught  us  to  think  soberly,  and  we  know  better  now.     We 
shall  never  do  anything  very  extraordinary :  our  biog- 
raphy will  not  be  written  after  we  are  gone.     So  be   it. 
Fiat    Voluntas    Tua !     We    are    quite    content  to  come 
down  genially.     It  does  not  matter  much  that  we  never 
shall  startle  the  world  with  the  echoes  of  our  fame.    Let 
us  rank  ourselves    with    '  Nature's  unambitious   under- 
wood, and  flowers   that  prosper  in  the  shade.'     But,  of 
course,  there  are  great  geniuses  who  ought  not  thus  to 
come  down  —  men  who,  though  lightly  esteemed  by  those 
around  them,  will  some  clay  take  their  place,  by  the  con- 
sent of  all  enlightened  judges,  among  the  most  illustrious 
of  human   kind.      The  very  powers  which  are  yet   to 
make  you   famous,  may  tend  to  make  the  ignorant  folk 
around  you  regard  you  as  a  crackbrained  fool.     You  re- 
member  the    beautiful  fairy  tale  of  the  ugly  duckling. 
The  poor  little  thing  was  laughed  at,  pecked,  and  perse- 
cuted, because  it  was  so  different  from  the  remainder  of 
the  brood,  till  it  fled  away  in  despair.     But  it  was  unap- 
preciated, just  because  it  was  too  good ;  for  it  grew  up  at 
length,   and   then   met   universal  admiration  :    the  ugly 
duckling  was  a  beautiful  swan  !     Even  so  that  great  man 
John   Foster,  preaching  among   a  petty  dissenting  sect 
fifty  years  since,  was  set  down  as  '  a  perfect  fool.'     But 
intelligent  men  have  fixed  his  mark  now.    It  was  because 
he  was  a  swan  that  the  quacking  tribe  thought  him  such 
an  ugly  duck.      Tote  may  be  such  another.     The  chance 
is,  indeed,  ten  thousand  to  one  that  you  are  not.     Still,  if 
you  have  the  fixed  consciousness  of  the  divine  gift  within 
you,  do  not  be  false  to  your  nature.     Resolutely  refuse  to 
come   down  —  only  be   assured,  my  friend,  that  should 
such  be  your  i-esolution,  you  will  have  to  resist  many 
temptations  to  give  up  ! 


CHAPTER  XII. 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF   DULNESS. 


§35 


^^  F  any  man  wishes  to  write  with  vigour  and 
decision  upon  one  side  of  any  debated  ques- 
jfwtfl  tion,  it  is  highly  expedient  that  he  should 
Us  write  before  he  has  thought  much  or  long 
upon  the  debated  question.  For  calmly  to  look  at  a  sub- 
ject in  all  its  bearings,  and  dispassionately  to  weigh  that 
which  may  be  said  pro  and  con.,  is  destructive  of  that  un- 
hesitating conviction  which  takes  its  side  and  keeps  it 
without  a  misgiving  whether  it  be  the  right  side,  and 
which  discerns  in  all  that  can  be  said  by  others,  and  in 
all  that  is  suggested  by  one's  own  mind,  only  something 
to  confirm  the  conclusion  already  arrived  at.  It  must  be 
often  a  very  painful  thing  to  have  what  may  be  termed  a 
judicial  mind  —  that  is,  a  mind  so  entirely  free  from  bias 
of  its  own,  that  in  forming  its  opinion  upon  any  subject, 
it  is  decided  simply  by  the  merits  of  the  case  as  set  be- 
fore it ;  for  the  arguments  on  either  side  are  sometimes 
all  but  exactly  balanced.  Yet  it  may  be  necessary  to 
say  yes  to  the  one  side  and  no  to  the  other ;  it  may  be  im- 
possible to  make  a  compromise  —  i.  e.,  to  say  to  both  sides 
at  once  both  yes  and  no.  And  if  great  issues  depend 
upon  the  conclusion  come  to,  a  conscientious  man  may 
undergo  an  indescribable  distraction  and  anguish  before 
he  concludes  what  to  believe  or  to  do.    If  a  man  be  lord- 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY   OF  DULNESS.       379 

chancellor,  or  general  commanding  an  army  in  action, 
there  must  often  be  a  keen  misery  in  the  incapacity  to 
decide  which  of  two  competing  courses  has  most  to  say 
for  itself.  Oh,  that  every  question  could  be  answered 
rightly  by  either  yes  or  no  !  Oh,  that  one  side  in  every 
quarrel,  in  every  debate,  were  decidedly  right,  and  the 
other  decidedly  wrong  !  Or,  if  that  cannot  be,  the  next 
blessing  that  is  to  be  desired  by  a  human  being  who 
wishes  to  be  of  use  where  God  has  put  him  in  this  world, 
is,  the  gift  of  vigorous  and  intelligent  one-sidedness  ;  for 
in  practice  conflicting  views  are  often  so  nearly  balanced, 
and  the  loss  of  time  and  energy  caused  by  indecision  is 
so  great,  that  it  is  better  to  adopt  the  wrong  view  reso- 
lutely, and  act  upon  it  unhesitatingly,  than  to  adopt  the 
right  view  dubiously,  and  take  the  right  path  falteringly, 
and  often  looking  back.  And  one  feels  somehow  as  if 
there  were  something  degrading  in  indecision ;  something 
manly  and  dignified  in  a  vigorous  will,  provided  that  vig- 
orous will  be  barely  clear  of  the  charge  of  blind,  uncal- 
culating  obstinacy.  For  the  spiritual  is  unquestionably  a 
higher  thing  than  the  material,  the  living  is  better  than 
the  inert,  the  man  than  the  machine.  But  the  judicial 
mind  approaches  to  the  nature  of  a  machine.  It  seems 
to  lack  the  power  of  originating  action  ;  to  be  determined 
entirely  by  foreign  forces.  It  is  simply  a  very  delicate 
pair  of  scales.  In  one  scale  you  put  all  that  can  be  said 
on  one  side,  in  the  other  scale  you  put  all  that  can  be 
said  on  the  other  side,  and  the  beam  passively  follows  the 
greater  weight.  Of  course,  the  analogy  between  the 
physical  and  the  spiritual  is  never  perfect.  The  scales 
which  weigh  argument  differ  in  various  respects  from  the 
scales  which  weigh  sugar  or  tea.  The  material  weighing- 
machine  accepts  its  weights  at  the  value  marked  upon 


380       CONCEKNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

them,  while  the  spiritual  weighing-machine  has  the  addi- 
tional anguish  of  deciding  whether  the  argument  put  into 
it  shall  be  esteemed  as  an  ounce,  a  pound,  or  a  ton. 

All  this  which  has  been  said  has  been  keenly  felt  by 
the  writer  in  thinking  of  the  subject  of  the  present  essay. 
I  am  sorry  now  that  I  did  not  begin  to  write  it  sooner.  I 
could  then  have  taken  my  side  without  a  scruple,  and 
have  expressed  an  opinion  which  would  have  been  reso- 
lute if  not  perfectly  right.  Various  facts  which  came 
within  my  observation  impressed  upon  me  the  fact  that, 
in  the  judgment  of  very  many  people,  there  is  a  dignity 
about  dulness.  Various  considerations  suggested  them- 
selves as  tending  to  prove  that  it  is  absurd  to  regard  dul- 
ness as  a  dignified  thing ;  and  the  business  of  the  essay 
was  designed  to  be,  first  to  state  and  illustrate  the  com- 
mon view,  and  next,  to  show  that  the  common  view  is 
absurd.  But  who  is  there  that  does  not  know  how  in  most 
instances,  if  it  strikes  you  on  a  first  glance  that  the 
majority  of  mankind  hold  and  act  upon  a  belief  that  is 
absurd,  longer  thought  shakes  your  confident  opinion,  and 
ultimately  you  land  in  the  conviction  that  the  majority  of 
mankind  are  quite  right  ?  The  length  of  time  recpjisite 
to  reach  those  second  thoughts  which  are  proverbially 
best,  varies  much.  It  seems  to  require  a  lifetime  (at 
least  for  men  of  warm  heart  and  quick  brain)  to  arrive 
at  calm,  enduring  sense  in  the  complications  of  political 
and  social  science. 

In  the  mellow  autumn  of  his  days,  the  man  who  started 
as  a  republican,  communist,  and  atheist,  has  settled  (never 
again  to  be  moved)  into  liberal  conservatism  and  unpre- 
tending Christianity.  It  requires  two  or  three  years 
(reckoning  from  the  first  inoculation  with  the  poison)  to 
return  to  common  sense  in  metaphysics.      For  myself, 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       381 

it  cost  a  week  of  constant  thought  to  reach  my  present 
wit-stand,  which  may  be  briefly  expressed  as  follows. 
Although  many  men  carry  their  belief  in  the  dignity  of 
dulness  to  an  unjustifiable  excess,  yet  there  is  no  small 
amount  of  sense  in  the  doctrine  of  the  dignity  of  dulness. 
Thus,  in  the  lengthening  light  of  various  April  evenings, 
did  the  writer  muse ;  thus,  while  looking  at  many  cro- 
cuses, yellow  in  the  sun  of  several  April  mornings.  Why 
is  it,  thought  I,  that  dulness  is  dignified  ?  Why  is  it, 
that  to  write  a  book  which  no  mortal  can  read,  because  it 
is  so  heavy  and  uninteresting,  is  a  more  dignified  thing 
than  to  write  a  book  so  pleasing  and  attractive  that  it 
shall  be  read  (not  as  work,  but  as  play)  by  thousands  ? 
Why  is  it  that  any  article,  essay,  or  treatise,  which  han- 
dles a  grave  subject  and  propounds  grave  truth,  only  in 
an  interesting  and  readable  style,  is  at  once  marked  with 
the  black  cross  of  contempt,  by  being  referred  to  the  class 
of  light  literature,  and  spoken  of  as  flimsy,  flashy,  slight, 
and  the  like  ;  while  a  treatise  on  the  self-same  subject, 
setting  out  the  self-same  views,  only  in  a  ponderous, 
wearisome,  unreadable,  and  (in  brief)  dull  fashion,  is 
regarded  as  a  composition  solid,  substantial,  and  emi- 
nently respectable  ?  Is  it  not  hard,  that  by  many  stupid 
people  a  sermon  is  esteemed  as  deep,  massive,  theologi- 
cal, solid,  simply  because  it  is  such  that  they  find  they 
cannot  for  their  lives  attend  to  it ;  and  another  sermon  is 
held  as  flimsy,  superficial,  flashy,  light,  simply  because  it 
attracts  or  compels  their  attention  ?  And  I  saw  that  the 
doctrine  of  the  dignity  of  dulness,  as  held  by  common- 
place people,  is  at  the  first  glance  mischievous  and  absurd, 
and  apparently  invented  by  stupid  men  for  their  encour- 
agement in  their  stupidity.  But  gradually  the  thought 
developed  itself,  that  rapidity  of  movement  is  inconsis- 


382       CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

tent  with  dignity.  Dignity  is  essentially  a  slow  thing. 
Agility  of  mind,  no  less  than  of  hody,  befits  it  not.  Rapid 
processes  of  thought,  quick  turns  of  feeling  —  a  host  of 
the  little  arts  and  characteristics  which  give  interest  to 
composition  —  have  too  much  of  the  nimble  and  mercu- 
rial about  them.  A  harlequin  in  ceaseless  motion  is  un- 
dignified ;  a  chief  justice,  sitting  very  still  on  the  bench 
and  scarcely  moving,  save  his  hands  and  head,  is  toler- 
ably dignified  ;  the  king  of  Siam  at  a  state  pageant,  sitting 
in  a  gallery  in  a  sumptuous  dress,  and  so  immovable, 
even  to  his  eyes,  that  foreign  ambassadors  have  doubted 
whether  he  were  not  a  wax  figure,  is  very  dignified ;  but 
the  most  dignified  of  all  in  the  belief  of  millions  of  people 
of  extraordinary  stupidity  was  the  Hindoo  deity  Brahm, 
who  through  innumerable  ages  remained  in  absolute  qui- 
escence, never  stirring,  and  never  doing  anything  what- 
ever. So  here,  I  thought,  is  the  key  of  the  mystery. 
There  is  a  general  prepossession  that  slowness  has  more 
dignity  than  agility ;  and  a  particular  application  of  this 
general  prepossession  leads  to  a  common  belief,  sometimes 
grossly  absurd,  sometimes  not  without  reason,  that  dul- 
ness  is  a  dignified  thing. 

Would  you  know,  my  youthful  reader,  how  to  earn  the 
high  estimation  of  the  great  majority  of  steady-going  old 
gentlemen  ?  I  will  tell  you  how.  You  have,  in  the 
morning,  attended  a  public  meeting  for  some  religious  or 
benevolent  purposes.  Many  speeches  were  made  there. 
In  the  evening  you  meet  at  dinner  a  grave  and  cautious 
man,  advanced  in  years,  whom  you  beheld  in  a  seat  of 
eminence  on  the  platform,  and  you  begin  to  discourse  of  the 
speeches  with  him.  Call  to  your  remembrance  the  speech 
you  liked  best  —  the  interesting,  stirring,  thrilling  one 
that  wakened  you  up  when  the  others  had  wellnigh  sent 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       383 

you  to  sleep  —  the  speech  that  you  held  your  breath  to 
listen  to,  and  that  made  your  nerves  tingle  and  your 
heart  beat  faster,  and  say  to  the  old  gentleman,  '  Do  you 
remember  Mr.  A.'s  speech  ?  Mere  flash  !  Very  super- 
ficial. Flimsy.  All  figures  and  flowers.  Flights  of 
fancy.  Nothing  solid.  Very  well  for  superficial  people, 
but  nothing  there  for  people  who  think.'  Then  fix  on 
the  very  dullest  and  heaviest  of  all  the  speeches  made. 
Fix  on  the  speech  that  you  could  not  force  yourself  to 
listen  to,  though,  when  you  did  by  a  great  effort  follow 
two  or  three  sentences,  you  saw  it  was  very  good  sense, 
but  insufferably  dull ;  and  say  to  the  old  gentleman, 
'  Very  different  with  the  speech  of  Mr.  B.  Ah,  there 
was  mind  there  I  Something  that  you  could  grasp ! 
Good  sound  sense.  No  flash.  None  of  your  extravagant 
flights  of  imagination.  Admirable  matter.  Who  cares 
for  oratory  ?  Give  me  substance  ! '  Say  all  this,  my 
youthful  reader,  to  the  solid  old  gentleman,  and  you  will 
certainly  be  regarded  by  him  as  a  young  man  of  sound 
sense,  and  with  taste  and  judgment  mature  beyond  your 
years.  And  if  you  wish  to  deepen  the  favourable  impres- 
sion you  have  made,  you  may  go  on  to  complain  of  the 
triviality  of  modern  literature.  Say  that  you  think  the 
writings  of  Mr.  Thackeray  wearisome  and  unimpi'oving ; 
for  your  part,  you  would  rather  read  the  sermons  of  Doc- 
tor Log.  Say  that  Fraser,s  Magazine  is  flippant :  you 
prefer  the  Journal  of  the  Statistical  Society.  You  can- 
not go  wrong.  You  have  an  unerring  rule.  You  have 
merely  to  consider  what  things,  books,  speeches,  articles, 
sermons,  you  find  most  dull  and  stupid  :  then  declare  in 
their  favour.  Acknowledge  the  grand  principle  of  the 
dignity  of  dulness.  So  shall  the  old  gentleman  tell  his 
fellows  that  you  have  '  got  a  head.'    There  is  '  something 


384       CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

in  you.'  You  are  an  '  uncommon  fine  young  man.'  The 
truth  meanwhile  will  be,  either  that  you  are  an  impostor, 
shamming  what  you  do  not  think,  or  a  man  of  most  extraor- 
dinary and  anomalous  tastes,  or  an  incorrigible  blockhead. 
But  whatever  you  may  be  yourself,  do  not  fall  into 
error  in  your  judgment  of  the  old  gentleman  and  his  com- 
peers. Do  not  think  of  him  uncharitably.  If  he  made 
a  speech  at  the  meeting,  you  may  be  ready  to  conclude 
that  the  reason  why  he  preferred  the  dull  speech  to  the 
brilliant  one  is,  that  his  own  speech  was  very,  very  dull. 
And  no  doubt,  in  some  cases,  it  is  envy  and  jealousy  that 
prompt  the  commonplace  man  to  underrate  the  brilliant 
appearances  of  the  brilliant  man.  It  must  be  a  most 
soothing  thought  to  the  ambitious  man  of  inferior  ability 
that  the  speech,  sermon,  or  volume  which  greatly  sur- 
passes his  own  shall  be  regarded  by  many  as  not  so  good 
as  his  own,  just  because  it  is  so  incomparably  better.  It 
would  be  a  pleasing  arrangement  for  all  race-horses 
which  are  lame  and  broken-winded,  that  because  Eclipse 
distances  the  field  so  far,  Eclipse  shall  therefore  be  ad- 
judged to  have  lost  the  race.  And  precisely  analogous 
is  the  floating  belief  in  many  commonplace  minds,  that  if 
a  discourse  or  composition  be  brilliant,  it  cannot  be  solid  ; 
that  if  it  be  interesting,  this  proves  it  to  be  flimsy.  No 
doubt  brilliancy  is  sometimes  attained  at  the  expense  of 
solidity  ;  no  doubt  some  writings  and  speeches  are  inter- 
esting whose  body  of  thought  is  very  slight ;  which,  as 
Scotch  people  say,  have  very  little  in  them.  But  the  vul- 
gar belief  on  this  matter  really  amounts  to  this  :  that  if  a 
speech,  sermon,  or  book  be  very  good,  this  proves  it  to 
be  very  bad.  And  as  most  people  who  produce  such  things 
produce  very  bad  ones,  you  may  easily  see  how  willingly 
this  belief  is  accepted  by  most  people.     Still,  this  does 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       385 

not  entirely  explain  the  opinion  expressed  by  the  old  gen- 
tleman already  mentioned.  It  does  not  necessarily  follow 
that  he  declares  the  speech  of  Mr.  A.  to  be  bad  simply 
because  he  knows  it  was  provokingly  good,  nor  that  he 
declares  the  speech  of  Mr.  B.  to  be  good  simply  because 
he  knows  it  was  soothingly  bad.  The  old  gentleman  may 
have  been  almost  or  even  entirely  sincere  in  the  opinion 
he  expressed. 

By  long  habit,  and  by  pushing  into  an  extreme  a  be- 
lief which  has  a  substratum  of  truth,  he  may  have  come 
to  regard  with  suspicion  the  speech  which  interests  him, 
and  to  take  for  granted,  with  Little  examination  of  the  fact 
of  the  case,  that  it  mast  be  flimsy  and  slight,  else  he 
could  not  take  it  in  so  pleasantly  and  easily.  And  all 
this  founds  not  merely  on  the  grand  principle  of  the  dig- 
nity of  dulness,  but  likewise  on  the  impassable  nature  of 
the  gulf  which  parts  instruction  from  amusement,  work 
from  play.  Work,  it  is  assumed  as  an  axiom,  is  of  the 
nature  of  pain.  To  get  solid  instruction  costs  exertion : 
it  is  work  :  it  is  a  painful  thing.  And  the  consequence 
is,  that  when  a  man  of  great  skill  and  bx'illiant  talent  is 
able  to  present  solid  instruction  in  a  guise  so  attractive 
that  it  becomes  pleasant  instead  of  painful  to  receive  it, 
you  are  startled.  Your  suspicions  are  aroused.  You  be- 
gin to  think  that  he  must  have  sacrificed  the  solid  and 
the  useful.  This  cannot  be  work,  you  think  :  it  must  be 
play,  for  it  is  pleasant  This  cannot  be  instruction,  you 
think  :  it  must  be  amusement,  for  it  is  easy  and  agreeable 
to  follow  it.  This  cannot  be  a  right  sermon,  you  think, 
for  it  does  not  put  me  asleep :  it  must  be  a  flimsy  and 
flashy  declamation  :  or  some  such  disparaging  expression 
is  used.  This  cannot  be  the  normal  essay,  you  think,  for 
you  read  it  through  without  yawning ;  you  don't  know 

25 


386       CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY   OF  DULNESS. 

what  is  wrong,  but  you  are  safe  in  saying  that  its  order  of 
thought  must  he  very  light ;  the  fact  that  you  could  read 
it  without  yawning  proves  that  it  is  so.  You  forget  the 
alternative,  that  solid  and  weighty  thought,  both  in  essay 
and  sermon,  may  have  been  made  easy  to  follow,  by  the 
interesting  fashion  in  which  they  Avere  put  before  you. 
But  stupid  people  forget  this  alternative  :  they  never 
think  of  it,  or  they  reject  it  at  the  first  mention  of  it.  It 
is  too  absurd.  It  ignores  the  vital  difference  between 
work  and  play.  Try  a  parallel  case  with  an  unsophisti- 
cated understanding,  and  you  will  see  how  ingrained  in 
our  nature  is  this  prejudice.  Your  little  boy  is  ill.  He 
must  have  some  medicine.  You  give  him  some  of  a 
most  nauseous  taste.  He  takes  it,  and  feels  certain  that 
it  will  make  him  well.  It  must  be  medicine,  he  knows  ; 
and  good  medicine  ;  because  it  is  so  abominably  disagree- 
able. But  give  the  little  man  some  healing  balm  (if  you 
can  find  it)  whose  taste  is  pleasant.  He  is  surprised.  His 
faith  in  the  medicine  is  shaken.  It  wont  make  him  well ; 
it  cannot  be  right  medicine ;  because  to  take  it  is  not 
painful  or  disagreeable.  A  poor  girl  in  the  parish  was 
dving  of  consumption.  Her  parents  had  heard  of  cod- 
liver  oil.  They  got  the  livers  of  certain  cod-fish  and  man- 
ufactured oil  for  themselves.  It  was  hideous  to  see,  to 
smell,  and  to  taste.  I  procured  a  bottle  of  the  proper  oil, 
and  took  it  up  to  my  poor  parishioner.  But  it  was  plain 
that  neither  she  nor  her  parents  had  much  faith  in  it.  It 
was  not  disgusting.  It  had  little  taste  or  odor.  It  was 
easy  to  take.  And  it  was  plain,  though  the  girl  used  it 
to  please  me,  that  the  belief  in  the  cottage  was,  that  by 
eliminating  the  disgusting  element,  you  eliminated  the 
virtue  of  the  oil  ;  in  brief,  that  when  medicine  ceases  to 
be  disagreeable,  it  ceases  to  be  useful.     There  is  in  hu- 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.        387 

man  nature  an  inveterate  tendency  to  judge  so.  And  it 
was  this  inveterate  tendency,  much  more  than  any  spirit 
of  envy  or  jealousy,  that  was  at  the  foundation  of  the 
old  man's  opinion,  that  the  dull  speech  or  sermon  was  the 
best ;  that  the  interesting  speech  or  sermon  was  flimsy. 
All  the  virtue  of  the  cod-liver  oil  was  there,  though  the 
nauseous  accompaniments  were  gone  ;  and  solid  thought 
and  sound  reasoning  may  have  been  present  in  quantity 
as  abundant  and  quality  as  admirable  in  the  interesting 
speech  as  in  the  dull  one ;  but  it  is  to  be  confessed 
the  a  'priori  presumption  was  the  other  way.  There  must 
be  something  —  you  don't  know  what  —  wrong  about  the 
work  which  is  as  pleasant  as  play.  There  must  be  some- 
thing—  you  cannot  say  what — amiss  about  the  sermon 
which  is  as  interesting  as  a  novel.  It  cannot  be  sound  in- 
struction, which  is  as  agreeable  as  amusement ;  any  more 
than  black  can  be  white,  or  pain  can  be  pleasure.  That 
is  the  unspoken,  undefined,  uneradicable  belief  of  the  dull 
majority  of  human  kind.  And  it  appears,  day  by  day, 
in  the  depreciatory  terms  in  which  stupid,  and  even  com- 
monplace, people  talk  of  compositions  which  are  brilliant, 
interesting,  and  attractive,  as  though  the  fact  of  their  pos- 
sessing these  characteristics  were  proof  sufficient  that  they 
lack  solidity  and  sound  sense. 

Now,  the  root  of  the  prevalent  error  (so  far  as  it  is  an 
error)  appears  to  me  to  lie  in  this  ;  that  sound  instruction 
and  solid  thought  are  regarded  as  analogous  to  medicine  ; 
whereas  they  ought  to  be  regarded  as  analogous  to  food. 
It  may  possibly  be  assumed,  that  medicine  is  a  thing  such 
in  its  essential  nature,  that  to  be  useful,  it  must  be  disa- 
greeable. But  I  believe  that  it  is  now  universally  ad- 
mitted,  that  the  food  which  is  most  pleasant  to  take,  is  the 
most  wholesome   and    nutritious.     The  time   is  past  in 


388        CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY   OF  DULNESS. 

which  philosophic  and  strong-minded  persons  thought  it 
a  fine  thing  to  cry  up  a  Spartan  repulsiveness  in  the  mat- 
ter of  diet.  Raw  steaks,  cut  from  a  horse  which  died  a 
natural  death  ;  and  the  sour  milk  of  mares,  are  no  longer 
considered  the  provender  upon  which  to  raise  men  who 
shall  be  of  necessity  either  thoughtful  or  heroic.  Unhap- 
pily, in  the  matter  of  the  dietetics  of  the  mind,  the  old 
notion  still  prevails  with  very  many.  And  there  is  some- 
thing to  be  said  for  it ;  but  only  what  might  also  be  said 
for  it  in  regard  to  the  food  of  the  body.  For  though,  as 
a  general  rule,  the  most  agreeable  food  is  the  most  whole- 
some, yet  there  is  an  extensive  kingdom  into  which  this 
law  does  not  extend  ;  I  mean  the  domain  of  sugar-plums, 
of  pastry,  of  crystallized  fruits,  and  the  like.  These  are 
pleasant ;  but  you  cannot  live  upon  them  ;  and  you  ought 
not  to  take  much  at  a  time.  And  if  you  give  a  child  the 
unlimited  run  of  such  materials  for  eating,  the  child  will 
assuredly  be  the  worse  for  it.  Well,  in  mental  food  the 
analogy  holds.  Here,  too,  is  a  realm  of  sweets,  of  dev- 
illed bones,  of  cura9oa.  Feverish  poetry,  ultra-senti- 
mental romance,  eccentric  wit  and  humour,  are  the  paral- 
lel things.  Rabelais,  Sterne,  The  Doctor  of  Southey, 
the  poetry  of  Mrs.  Hemans,  the  plays  of  Otway,  Mar- 
lowe, Ford,  and  Dekker,  may  all,  in  limited  quantity,  be 
partaken  of  with  relish  and  advantage  by  the  healthy  ap- 
petite ;  but  let  there  not  be  too  much  of  them  ;  and  do 
not  think  to  nourish  your  intellectual  nature  on  such  food 
alone.  No  child,  shiny  with  excessive  pastry,  or  tooth- 
aching  and  sulky  through  superabundant  sugar-plums,  is 
in  a  plight  more  morbid  and  disagreeable  than  is  the 
clever  bov  or  girl  of  eighteen,  who  from  the  dawn  of  the 
taste  for  reading,  has  been  turned  into  a  large  library  to 
choose  books  at  will,  and  who  has  crammed  an  inexperi- 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       389 

enced  head  and  undisciplined  heart  with  extravagant  fan- 
cies and  unreal  feelings  from  an  exclusive  diet  of  novels 
and  plays.  But,  setting  aside  the  department  of  sweets,  I 
maintain,  that  given  wholesome  food,  the  more  agreeably 
it  is  cooked  and  served  up,  the  better ;  and  given  sound 
thought,  the  more  interesting  and  attractive  the  guise  in 
which  it  is  presented,  the  better.  And  all  this  may  be, 
without  the  least  sacrifice  of  the  sound  and  substantial 
qualities.  No  matter  what  you  are  writing  —  sermon, 
ai'ticle,  book  —  let  Sydney  Smith's  principle  be  remem- 
bered, that  every  style  is  good,  except  the  tiresome.  And 
who  does  not  know,  that  there  have  been  men  who,  with- 
out the  least  sacrifice  of  solidity,  have  invested  all  they 
had  to  say  with  an  enchaining  interest ;  and  led  the  reader 
through  the  most  abstruse  metaphysics,  the  closest  rea- 
soning, the  most  intricate  mazes  of  history,  the  gravest 
doctrines  of  theology,  in  such  fashion  that  the  reader  was 
profited  while  he  thought  he  was  only  being  delighted, 
and  charmed  while  he  was  informed  ! 

The  thing  has  been  done  ;  of  course  it  is  very  difficult 
to  do  it ;  and  to  do  it  demands  remarkable  gifts  of  nature 
and  training.  The  extraordinary  thing  is  that  where  a 
man  has,  by  much  pains,  or  by  extraordinary  felicity, 
added  interest  to  utility,  —  given  you  solid  thought  in  an 
attractive  form,  —  many  people  will,  and  that  not  entirely 
of  envy,  but  through  bond  fide  stupidity,  at  once  say  that 
the  interesting  sermon,  the  picturesque  history,  the  lively 
argument,  is  flimsy  and  flashy,  superficial,  wanting  in 
depth,  and  so  forth.  Yet  if  you  think  it  unpardonable  in 
the  cook,  who  has  excellent  food  given  to  prepare,  to  send 
it  up  spoiled  and  barely  eatable,  is  it  not  quite  as  bad  in 
the  man  who  has  given  to  him  important  facts,  solemn 
doctrines,  weighty  reasons,  yet  who  presents  them  to  his 


390       CONCERNING  THE   DIGNITY   OF   DULNESS. 

readers  or  hearers  in  a  tough,  dry,  stupid  shape  ?  Does 
the  turbot,  the  saddle  of  mutton,  cease  to  be  nutritious 
because  it  is  well  cooked  ?  And  wherefore,  then,  should 
the  doctrine  or  argument  become  flimsy  because  it  is  put 
skilfully  and  interestingly  ?  I  do  believe  there  are  people 
who  think  that  in  the  world  of  mind,  if  a  good  beef-steak 
be  well  cooked,  it  turns  in  the  process  into  a  stick  of  bar- 
ley-sugar. 

To  this  class  belongs  the  great  majority  of  stupid 
people,  and  also  of  quiet,  steady-going  people,  of  fair 
average  ability.  Among  the  latter  there  is  not  only  a 
dislike  of  clever  men,  arising  from  envy :  but  a  real 
honest  fear  of  what  they  may  do,  arising  from  a  belief 
that  a  very  clever  man  cannot  be  a  safe  or  judicious 
man,  and  that  a  striking  view  cannot  be  a  sound  view. 
Once  upon  a  time,  in  a  certain  church,  I  heard  a  ser- 
mon preached  by  a  certain  great  preacher.  The  congre- 
gation listened  with  breathless  attention.  The  sermon 
was  indeed  a  very  remarkable  one ;  and  I  remember 
well  how  I  thought  that  never  before  had  I  under- 
stood the  magic  spell  which  is  exerted  by  fervid  elo- 
quence. And  walking  away  from  church,  I  was  looking 
back  upon  the  track  of  thought  over  which  the  preacher 
had  borne  the  congregation,  and  thinking  how  skilfully 
and  admirably  he  had  carried  his  hearers,  easily  and 
interestedly,  through  very  difficult  ground,  and  over  a 
very  long  journey.  Thus  musing,  I  encountered  a  very 
stupid  clergyman  who  had  been  in  church    too.     '  Did 

you  hear  Mr.  M ? '  said  he.     '  It  was   mere  flash  ; 

very  flimsy  ;  all  flowers.  Nothing  solid.'  With  wonder 
I  regarded  my  stupid  friend.  I  said  to  him  :  Strip 
off  from  the  sermon  all  the  fancy  and  all  the  feeling ; 
look  at  the  bare  skeleton  of  thought :    and  then  I  stated 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       391 

it  to  the  man.  Is  not  that,  said  I,  a  marvel  of  meta- 
physical acuteness,  of  rigorous  logic,  of  exact  symmetry  ? 
Cut  off  the  flash  as  you  call  it ;  here  is  the  solid  re- 
siduum ;  is  that  slight  or  flashy  ?  Is  there  not  three 
times  the  thought  of  ordinary  humdrum  sermons  even 
in  quantity,  not  to  name  the  incalculable  difference  in 
the  matter  of  quality  ?  On  this  latter  point,  indeed,  I 
did  not  insist ;  for  with  some  folk  quantity  is  the  only 
measure  of  thought ;  and  in  the  world  of  ideas  a  turnip 
is  with  such  equal  to  a  pineapple,  provided  they  be  of 
the  same  size.  '  Don't  you  see,'  said  I,  with  growing 
wrath,  to  my  stupid  friend,  who  regarded  me  meanwhile 
with  a  stolid  stare,  '  that  it  only  shows  what  an  admi- 
rable preacher  Mr.  M is,  if  he  was  able  to  carry  a 

whole  congregation  in  rapt  attention  along  a  line  of 
thought,  in  traversing  which  you  and  I  would  have  put 
all  our  hearers  asleep  ?  You  and  I  might  possibly  have 
given  the  thought  like  the  diamond  as  it  comes  from  the 
mine,  a  dull  pebble ;  and  because  that  eminent  man 
gave  it  polished  and  glancing,  is  it  therefore  not  a  dia- 
mond still  ? '  Of  course,  it  was  vain  to  talk.  The 
stolid  preacher  kept  by  his  one  idea.  The  sermon 
could  not  be  solid,  because  it  was  brilliant.  Because 
there  was  gleam  and  glitter,  there  could  not  be  any- 
thing besides.  What  more  could  be  said  ?  I  knew  that 
my  stupid  friend  had  on  his  side  the  majority  of  the 
race. 

It  is  irritating  when  you  have  written  an  essay  with 
care,  after  a  great  deal  of  thought,  to  find  people  talk 
slightingly  of  it  as    very   light.      '  The   essays  of  Mr. 

Q are  sensible  and  well  written,   but  the  order  of 

thought  is  of  the  lightest.'  I  found  these  words  in  a 
review   of   certain    essays,   written   by  a  man  who  had 


392       CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF   DULNESS. 

evidently  read  the  essays.  Ask  people  what  they  mean 
by  such  vague  phrases  of  disparagement  ;  and  if  you 
can  get  them  to  analyze  their  feeling,  you  will  find  that 
in  five  cases  out  of  six,  they  mean  simply  that  they  can 
read  the  compositions  with  interest  ?  Is  that  anything 
against  them?  That  does  not  touch  the  question  whether 
they  are  weighty  and  sound.  They  may  be  sound  and 
weighty  for  all  that.  Of  course,  that  which  is  called 
severe  thought  cannot,  however  skilfully  put  and  illus- 
trated, be  so  easily  followed  by  undisciplined  minds. 
But  in  most  cases  the  people  who  talk  of  a  man's  writ- 
ings being  light,  know  nothing  at  all  about  severe  think- 
ing. They  mean  that  they  are  sure  that  an  essay  is 
solid,  if  they  find  it  uninteresting.  It  must  be  good  if 
it  be  a  weary  task  to  get  through  it.  The  lack  of  inter- 
est is  the  great  test  that  the  composition  is  of  a  high 
order.  It  must  be  dignified,  because  it  is  so  dull.  You 
read  it  with  pleasure  ;  therefore  it  must  be  flimsy.  You 
read  it  with  weariness ;  therefore  it  must  be  solid.  Or, 
to  put  the  principle  in  its  simplest  form  —  the  essay 
must  be  bad  because  it  is  so  good.  The  essay  must  be 
good,  because  it  is  so  bad.  Here  we  have  the  founda- 
tion principle  of  the  grand  doctrine  of  the  dignity  of 
dullness. 

And,  by  hosts  of  people,  the  principle  is  unsparingly 
applied.  An  interesting  book  is  flimsy,  because  it  is 
interesting.  An  interesting  sermon  is  flimsy,  because  it 
is  interesting.  #  They  are  referred  to  the  class  of  light 
literature.  And  it  is  undignified  to  be  light.  It  is 
grand,  it  is  clerical,  it  is  worthy  of  a  cabinet  minister, 
it  h  even  archiepiscopal,  to  write  a  book  which  no  one 
would  voluntarily  read.  But  some  stupid  people  think 
it  unclerical  to   write   a   book  which   sensible  folk   will 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       393 

read  with  pleasure.  It  would  amuse  Mr.  Kingsley,  and 
I  am  sure  it  would  do  no  more  than  amuse  him,  to  hear 
what  I  have  heard  steady-going  individuals  say  about 
his  writings.  The  question  whether  the  doctrines  he  en- 
forces be  true  or  not,  they  cared  not  for  at  all.  Neither 
did  they  inquire  whether  or  not  he  enforces,  with  sin- 
gular fervor  and  earnestness,  certain  doctrines  of  far- 
reaching  practical  moment.  That  matters  not.  He 
enforces  them  in  books  which  it  is  interesting  and  even 
enchaining  to  read  ;  and  this  suffices  (in  their  judgment) 
to  condemn  these  books.  I  have  heard  stupid  people 
say  that  it  was  not  worthy  of  Archbishop  Whately  to 
write  those  admirable  Annotations  on  Bacon's  Essays. 
No  doubt  that  marvellously  acute  intellect  does  in  those 
Annotations  apply  itself  to  a  great  variety  of  themes  and 
purposes,  greater  and  lesser,  like  a  steam-hammer  which 
can  weld  a  huge  mass  of  red-hot  iron,  and  with  equal 
facility  drive  a  nail  into  a  plank  by  successive  gentle 
taps.  No  doubt  the  volume  sometimes  discusses  grave 
matters  in  a  grave  manner,  and  sometimes  matters  less 
grave  (but  still  with  a  serious  bearing  on  life  and  its 
affairs)  in  a  playful  manner.  But  on  the  whole,  if  you 
wished  to  convey  to  a  stranger  to  the  archbishop's  writ- 
ings (supposing  that  among  educated  people  you  could 
find  one)  some  notion  of  the  extent  and  versatility  of  his 
powers,  it  is  probable  that,  of  all  his  books,  this  is  the 
one  you  would  advise  the  stranger  to  read.  '  Not  so,' 
said  my  friend  Dr.  Log.  '  The  archbishop  should  not 
have  published  such  a  work.' 

Who  ever  heard  of  an  archbishop  who  wrote  a  book 
which  young  men  and  women  would  read  because  they 
enjoyed  it  ?  The  book  could  not  be  dignified,  because 
it  was  not  dull.     Why  did  the   steady  old  gentlemen 


394       CONCERNING   THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

among  the  fellows  of  a  certain  college  in  the  univei'sity 
of  Cambridge,  a  good  many  years   ago,    turn   out    and 
vote  against  a  certain  clergyman's  becoming  their  head, 
who  was  infinitely  the  most  distinguished  of  their  num- 
ber, and  upon  whose  becoming  their  head  every  one  had 
counted  with  certainty  ?     He  was  a  very  distinguished 
scholar,  a  very  successful  tutor  :  a  man  of  dignified  man- 
ners and  irreproachable   character.      Had   he   been  no 
more,  he  had  been  the  head  of  his  college,  and  he  had 
been  a  bishop  now.     But  there  was  an  objection  which, 
in  the   minds  of  these  frail   but   steady  old  gentlemen, 
could  not   be  got  over.     His  sermons  were  interesting ! 
His  warmest  friends  could  not  say  that  they  were  dull. 
When  he  came  to  do  his  duty  as  select  preacher  before 
the   university,   the    church    wherein    he    preached  was 
crowded  to    excess.      Not  merely  was    the  unbecoming 
spectacle  witnessed  of  all  the  pews  being  filled  ;   but  it 
could  not  be  concealed  that  the  passages  were  crowded 
with  human  beings  who  were  content  to  stand  through- 
out the  service.     The  old  gentlemen  could  not  bear  this. 
The  head  of  a  college  must  be  dignified ;  and  how  could 
a  man  be  dignified  who  was  not  dull,  even  in  the  pul- 
pit ?     The  younger  fellows  were  unanimous  in  the  great 
preacher's  favour  ;    but   the  old  gentlemen  formed    the 
majority,  and  they  were  unanimous  against  him.     Some 
people  suggested  that  they  were  envious  of  his  greater 
eminence  :  that  they  wished  to  put  down  the  man  who, 
at  a  comparatively  early  age,  had   so  vastly  surpassed 
themselves.     The  theory  was  uncharitable  ;    it  was  more 
—  it  was  false.     Jealousy  had  little  part  in  the  minds  of 
these  frail   but  safe   old  men.     They  honestly  believed 
that  the  great  preacher  could  not  be  solid  or  dignified, 
because  he  was  brilliant   and   attractive.     They  never 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       395 

heard  his  sermons ;  but  they  were  sure  that  something 
must  be  wrong  about  the  sermons,  because  multitudes 
wished  to  hear  them.  Is  not  the  normal  feeling  after 
listening  to  a  sermon  to  its  close,  one  of  gentle,  unex- 
pressed relief?  The  great  preacher  was  rejected,  and 
an  excellent  man  was  elected  in  his  stead,  who  could  not 
fail  to  be  dignified,  for  never  mortal  was  more  dull. 
Cardinal  Wiseman  tells  us  very  frankly  that  the  great 
principle  of  the  dignity  of  dulness  is  always  recognized 
and  acted  on  by  the  gentlemen  who  elect  the  pope. 
Gravity,  approaching  to  stolidity  ;  slowness  of  motion, 
approaching  to  entire  standing-still ;  are  (as  a  general 
rule)  requisite  in  the  human  beings  who  succeed  to  the 
chair  of  St.  Peter.  It  has  been  insinuated  that  in  the 
Church  of  England  similar  characteristics  are  (or  at 
least  were)  held  essential  in  those  who  are  made  bishops, 
and,  above  all,  archbishops.  You  can  never  be  sure 
that  a  man  will  not  do  wrong  who  is  likely  to  do  any- 
thing at  all.  But  if  it  be  perfectly  ascertained  that  a 
man  will  do  nothing,  you  may  be  satisfied  that  he  will  do 
nothing  wrong.  This  is  one  consideration ;  but  the 
further  one  is  the  pure  and  simple  dignity  of  dulness. 
A  clergyman  may  look  forward  to  a  bishopric  if  he 
write  books  which  are  unreadable,  but  not  if  he  write 
books  which  are  readable.  The  chance  of  Dr.  Log  is 
infinitely  better  than  that  of  Mr.  Kingsley.  And  nothing 
can  be  more  certain  than  that  the  principle  of  the  dig- 
nity of  dulness  kept  the  mitre  from  the  head  of  Sydney 
Smith.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  he  was  a  suitable 
man  to  be  a  bishop.  I  think  he  was  not.  But  it  was 
not  because  of  anything  really  unclerical  about  the 
genial  man  that  he  was  excluded.  The  people  who  ex- 
cluded him  did  not  hesitate  to  appoint  men  obnoxious  to 


396       CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

more  serious  charges  than  Sydney  Smith.  But  then, 
whatever  these  men  were  or  were  not,  they  were  all 
dull.  They  wrote  much,  some  of  them ;  but  nobody 
ever  read  what  they  wrote.  But  Sydney  Smith  was 
interesting.  You  could  read  his  writings  with  pleasure. 
He  was  unquestionably  the  reverse  of  dull,  and  there- 
fore certainly  the  reverse  of  dignified.  Through  much 
of  his  latter  life  the  same  suspicion  has,  with  millions  of 
safe-going  folk,  thrown  a  shadow  on  Lord  Brougham. 
He  was  too  lively.  What  he  wrote  was  too  interesting. 
Solid  old  gentlemen  feared  for  his  good  sense.  They 
thought  they  never  could  be  sure  what  he  would  do 
next.  Even  Lord  St.  Leonards  lost  standing  with  many 
when  he  published  his  Handy  Book  on  Property  Lata. 
A  lord-chancellor  writing  a  book  sold  at  railway  sta- 
tions, and  read  (with  interest,  too)  in  railway  carriages ! 
What  was  the  world  coming  to  ?  But  it  was  quite  be- 
coming in  the  great  man  to  produce  that  elaborate  and 
authoritative  woi'k  on  Vendors  and  Purchasers,  of  which 
I  have  often  beheld  the  outside,  but  never  the  inside. 
And  wherefore  did  the  book  beseem  a  chancellor? 
Wherefore  but  because  to  the  ordinary  reader  it  was 
heavy  as  lead.  Have  not  you,  my  reader,  often  heard 
like  criticism  of  Lord  Campbell's  interesting  volumes  of 
the  biography  of  his  predecessors  ?  '  Very  interesting  ; 
very  well  written ;  much  curious  information  ;  but  not 
quite  the  thing  for  the  first  man  on  the  judicial  bench  of 
Britain  to  write.'  Now,  upon  what  is  this  criticism 
founded,  but  upon  the  grand  principle  that  liveliness  and 
interest  do  not  become  the  compositions  of  a  man  in 
important  office :  in  brief,  that  that  is  not  dignified, 
which  is  not  dull. 

But  let  us  not  be  extreme.    Let  it  be  admitted  that  the 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

principle  has  some  measure  of  truth.  There  are  facts 
which  appear  to  give  it  countenance,  which  really  do  give 
it  countenance.  Punch  is  more  interesting  than  a  sermon, 
that  is  admitted  as  a  fact.  The  tacit  inference  is  that  an 
interesting  sermon  must  have  become  interesting  by  un- 
duly approximating  to  Punch.  There  is  literature  which 
may  properly  be  termed  light.  There  is  thought  which 
is  superficial,  flimsy,  slight,  and  so  on.  There  are  com- 
positions which  are  brilliant  without  being  solid,  in  which 
there  are  many  flowers  and  little  fruit.  And  no  doubt, 
by  the  nature  of  things,  this  light  and  flashy  thought  is 
more  interesting,  and  more  easily  followed,  than  more 
solid  material.  You  can  read  Vanity  Fair  when  you 
could  not  read  Butler's  Analogy.  You  can  read  Punch 
when  you  could  not  read  Vanity  Fair.  And  the  a  priori 
presumption  may  be,  when  you  find  a  composition  of  a 
grave  class  which  is  as  interesting  as  one  of  a  lighter 
class,  that  this  interest  has  been  attained  by  some  sacri- 
fice of  the  qualities  which  beseem  a  composition  of  a 
grave  class.  Let  our  rule  be  as  follows  :  If  the  treatise 
under  consideration  be  interesting  because  it  treats  of 
light  subjects,  which  in  themselves  are  more  interesting 
than  grave  ones  (as  play  always  must  be  more  pleasing 
than  work),  let  the  treatise  be  classed  as  light.  But  if  in 
the  treatise  you  find  grave  and  serious  thoughts  set  out  in 
such  a  fashion  as  to  be  interesting,  then  all  honour  to  the 
author  of  that  treatise  !  He  is  not  a  slight,  superficial 
writer,  though  stupid  people  may  be  ready  to  call  him  so. 
He  is,  in  truth,  a  grave  and  serious  writer,  though  he  has 
succeeded  in  charming  while  he  instructs.  He  is  truly 
dignified,  though  he  be  not  dull.  He  is  doing  a  noble 
work,  enforcing  a  noble  principle :  the  noble  principle,  to 
wit  (which  most  people  silently  assume   is  false),  that 


398       CONCERNING  THE   DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

what  is  right  need  not  of  necessity  be  so  very  much  less 
attractive  than  what  is  wrong,  The  general  belief  is, 
that  right  is  prosy,  humdrum,  commonplace,  dull ;  and 
that  the  poetry  of  existence,  the  gleam,  the  music,  the 
thrill,  the  romance,  are  with  delightful  wrong.  And  tak- 
ing work  as  the  first  meridian,  marking  what  is  right, 
many  people  really  hold  that  any  approximation  to  play 
(and  all  that  interests  and  pleases  is  in  so  far  an  approxi- 
mation to  play)  is  a  deflection  in  the  direction  of  wrong,  in- 
asmuch as  it  is  beyond  question  a  marked  departure  from 
the  line  of  ascertained  right.  Let  us  get  rid  of  the  no- 
tion !  In  morals,  the  opposite  of  right  need  not  be  wrong. 
Many  things  are  right,  and  their  opposites  right  too. 
Work  is  right.  Play  is  the  opposite  of  work,  yet  play 
is  right  too.  Gravity  is  right :  interest  is  right  too  ;  and 
though  practically  these  two  things  seem  opposed,  they 
need  not  be  so.  And  as  we  should  bless  the  man  who 
would  teach  us  how  to  idealize  our  work  into  play,  so 
should  we  bless  the  man  who  is  able  to  blend  gravity  and 
interest  together.  Such  a  man  as  Macaulay  was  virtually 
spreading  the  flag  of  defiance  in  the  face  of  stupid  peo- 
ple holding  a  stupid  belief,  and  declaring  by  every  page 
he  wrote,  that  what  is  right  need  not  be  unpleasant;  that 
what  is  interesting  need  not  be  flimsy  ;  that  what  is  dig- 
nified need  not  be  dull. 

I  am  well  aware  that  it  is  hopeless  to  argue  with  a  prej- 
udice so  rooted  as  that  in  favour  of  the  dignity  of  dul- 
ness ;  and  especially  hopeless  when  I  am  obliged  to  ad- 
mit that  I  cannot  entirely  oppose  that  principle,  that  I 
feel  a  certain  justice  in  it.  Slowness  of  motion,  I  have 
said,  is  essentially  more  dignified  than  rapidity  of  motion. 
There  is  something  dignified  about  an  elephant  walking 
along,  with  massive  tramp  ;    there  is  nothing  dignified 


CONCEKNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       399 

about  a  frisking   greyhound,   light,  airy,  graceful.    And 
it    is    to  be    admitted    that  some  men  frisk   through   a 
subject  like  a  greyhound ;  others  tramp  through  it  like 
an  elephant.     And  though  the  playful  greyhound  fashion 
of  writing,  that  dallies  and  toys  with  a  subject,  may  be  the 
more  graceful  and  pleasing,  the  dignity  doubtless  abides 
with  the   stern,  slow,  straightforward,  elephantine  tramp. 
The  Essays  of  Elia  delight  you,  but  you  stand  in  no  awe 
of  their  author ;  the  contrary  is  the  case  with  a  charge  of 
Lord   Chief-Justice    Ellenborough.     And  so  thoroughly 
elephantine  are  the  mental  movements  of  some  men,  that 
even  their  rare  friskiness   is   elephantine.      Every  one 
must  know  this  who  is  at  all  acquainted  with  the  ponder- 
ous and  cowlike   curvetings   of  the  Rambler.     Physical 
agility  is  inconsistent  with  physical  dignity ;  mental  agil- 
ity with  mental   dignity.      You  could  not  for  your  life 
very  greatly  esteem  the  solemn  advices  given  you  from 
the  pulpit  on  Sunday,  by  a  clergyman  whom   you  had 
seen  whirling  about  in  a  polka  on  Friday  evening.    The 
momentum  of   that    rotary  movement    would    cling    to 
him  (in  your  feeling)  still.     I  remember  when  I  was  a 
little  boy  what  a  shock  it  was  to  my  impressions  of  judi- 
cial dignity  to  see  a  departed  chief  justice  cantering  down 
Constitution-hill  on  a  tall,  thoroughbred  chestnut.     The 
swift  movement  befitted  not  my  recollections  of  the  judg- 
ment-seat, the  ermine,  the  great  full-bottomed  wig.     I  felt 
aggrieved  and  mortified  even  by  the  tallness  and  slender- 
ness  of  the  chestnut  horse.    Had  the  judge  been  mounted 
on   a  dray  horse  of  enormous  girth  and  vast  breadth 
(even  if  not  very  high)  I  should  have  been  comparatively 
content.      Breadth    was    the    thing    desiderated   by  the 
youthful  heart ;    breadth,   and   the   solidity  which   goes 
with  breadth,  and  the  slowness  of  motion  which  goes  with 


400       CONCERNING   THE  DIGNITY   OF  DULNESS. 

solid  extension,  and  the  dignity  which  goes  with  slowness 
of  motion.  I  speak  of  impression  made  on  the  undisci- 
plined human  soul,  doubtless  ;  but  then  the  normal  im- 
pression made  by  anything  is  the  impression  it  makes  on 
the  undisciplined  human  soul.  In  the  world  of  mind, 
you  may  educate  human  nature  into  a  condition  in  which 
all  tendencies  shall  be  reversed  ;  in  which  fire  shall  wet 
you,  and  water  dry  you.  Who  does  not  know  that  the 
estimation  in  which  the  humbler  folk  of  a  rural  parish 
regard  their  clergyman,  depends  in  a  great  degree  upon 
his  physical  size  ?  A  man  six  feet  high  will  command 
greater  reverence  than  one  of  five  feet  six  ;  but  if  the  man 
of  five  feet  six  in  height  be  six  feet  in  circumference, 
then  he  will  command  greater  reverence  than  the  man  of 
six  feet  in  height,  provided  the  latter  be  thin.  And  after 
great  reflection,  I  am  led  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  true 
cause  of  this  bucolic  dignity  does  not  abide  in  mere  size. 
Dignity,  even  in  the  country,  is  not  in  direct  proportion 
to  extension,  as  such.  No;  it  is  in  direct  propor- 
tion to  that  slowness  of  movement  which  comes  of  solid 
extension.  A  man  who  walks  very  fast  is  less  dignified 
than  a  man  who  walks  very  slow ;  and  that  which  con- 
duces to  the  slow,  ponderous,  measured  step,  is  a  valuable 
accessory  to  personal  dignity.  But  the  connection  is  not 
so  essential  as  the  unthinking  might  conclude  between 
personal  dignity  and  personal  bulk.  Now,  the  composi- 
tion, whether  written  or  spoken,  of  some  men,  is  (so  to 
speak)  a  display  of  mental  agility.  It  is  the  result  of 
rapid  mental  movements,  you  can  see.  Not  with  massive 
heaves  and  sinkings,  like  the  engines  of  an  ocean  steam- 
ship, did  the  mental  machinery  play  that  turned  off  such 
a  book,  such  a  speech,  such  an  essay  ;  but  rather  with 
rapid  jerkings  of  little  cranks,  and  invisible  whirlings  of 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.       401 

little  wheels.  And  the  thing  manufactured  is  pretty,  not 
grand.  It  is  very  nice.  You  conclude  that  as  the  big 
steam-engine  cannot  play  very  fast,  so  the  big  mind  too. 
The  mind  that  can  go  at  a  tremendous  pace,  you  conclude 
to  be  a  little  mind.  The  mind  that  can  skip  about,  you 
conclude  cannot  be  a  massive  mind.  There  are  truth  and 
falsehood  in  your  conclusion.  Very  great  minds,  guided 
by  very  comprehensive  views,  have  with  lightning-like 
promptitude  rushed  to  grand  decisions  and  generaliza- 
tions. But  it  cannot  be  denied  that  ponderous  machinery, 
physical  and  mental,  generally  moves  slowly.  And  in 
the  mental  world,  many  folk  readily  suppose  that  the  ma- 
chinery which  moves  slowly  is  certainly  ponderous.  A 
man  who  gets  up  to  speak  in  a  deliberative  assembly,  and 
with  a  deep  voice  from  an  extensive  chest,  and  inscruta- 
ble meaning  depicted  on  massive  features,  slowly  states 
his  views,  with  long  pauses  between  the  members  of  his 
sentences,  and  very  long  pauses  between  his  sentences, 
will  by  many  people  be  regarded  as  making  a  speech 
which  is  very  heavy  metal  indeed.  Possibly  it  may  be ; 
possibly  it  may  not.  I  ought  to  say,  that  the  most  telling 
deliberative  speaker  I  ever  heard,  speaks  in  that  slow 
fashion.  But  when  he  speaks  on  an  important  subject 
which  interests  him,  every  deliberate  word  goes  home 
like  a  cannon-ball.  He  speaks  in  eighty-four  pounders. 
But  I  have  heard  men  as  slow,  who  spoke  in  large  soap- 
bubbles.  And  of  all  lightness  of  thought,  deliver  us  from 
ponderous  lightness !  Nothings  are  often  excusable,  and 
sometimes  pleasing  ;  but  pompous  nothings  are  always 
execrable.  I  have  known  men  who,  morally  speaking, 
gave  away  tickets  for  very  inferior  parish  soup  with  the 
air  of  one  freely  dispensing  invitations  to  the  most  sump- 
tuous bancpuet  that  ever  was  provided  by  mortal.     Oh  ! 

26 


402       CONCERNING  THE   DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS. 

to  stick  in  a  skewer,  and   see  the  great  wind-bag  col- 
lapse ! 

You  do  not  respect  the  jackpudding  who  amuses  you, 
though  he  may  amuse  you  remarkably  well.  The  more 
you  laugh  at  him,  the  less  you  respect  him.  And,  to  the 
vulgar  apprehension,  any  man  who  amuses  you,  or  who 
approaches  towards  amusing  you,  or  who  produces  any- 
thing which  interests  you  (which  is  an  approximation 
towards  amusing  you),  will  be  regarded  as,  quoad  hoc, 
approaching  undignifiedly  in  the  direction  of  the  jack- 
pudding.  The  only  way  in  which  to  make  sure  that  not 
even  the  vulgarest  mind  shall  discern  this  approximation, 
is  to  instruct  while  you  carefully  avoid  interesting,  and 
still  more  amusing,  even  in  the  faintest  degree.  Even 
wise  men  cannot  wholly  divest  themselves  of  the  preju- 
dice. You  cannot  but  feel  an  inconsistency  between  the 
ideas  of  Mr.  Disraeli  writing  Henrietta  Temple,  and  Mr. 
Disraeli  leading  the  House  of  Commons.  You  feel  that 
somehow  it  costs  an  effort  to  feel  that  there  is  nothing  un- 
befitting when  the  author  of  The  Caxtons  becomes  a 
secretary  of  state.  You  fancy,  at  the  first  thought,  that  you 
would  have  had  greater  confidence  in  some  sound,  steady, 
solid  old  gentleman,  who  never  amused  or  interested  you 
in  any  way.  The  office  to  be  filled  is  a  dignified  one ; 
and  how  can  a  man  befit  a  dignified  office  who  has  inter- 
ested and  amused  you  so  much  ? 

But  the  consideration  which  above  all  others  leads  the 
sober  majority  of  mankind  to  respect  and  value  decent 
and  well-conducted  dulness,  is  the  consideration  of  the 
outrageous  practical  folly,  and  the  insufferable  wicked- 
ness, which  many  men  of  genius  appear  to  have  regarded 
it  their  prerogative  to  indulge  in.  You  can  quite  under- 
stand how  plain,  sensible  people  may  abhor  an  eccentric 


CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY  OF  DULNESS.        403 

genius,  and  wish  rather  for  sound  principle  and  sound 
sense.  And  probably  most  men  whose  opinion  is  of  much 
value,  would  be  thankful  to  have  decent  dulness  in  their 
nearest  relations,  rather  than  the  brilliant  aberrations  of 
such  men  as  Shelley,  Byron,  and  Coleridge.  Give  us  the 
plain  man  who  will  do  his  work  creditably  in  life ;  who 
will  support  his  children  and  pay  his  debts  ;  rather  than 
the  very  clever  man  who  fancies  that  his  cleverness  sets 
him  free  from  all  the  laws  which  bind  commonplace  mor- 
tals ;  who  does  not  think  himself  called  upon  to  work  for 
his  bread,  but  sponges  upon  industrious  men,  or  howls  out 
because  the  nation  will  not  support  him  in  idleness ;  who 
wonders  at  the  sordid  tradesman  who  asks  him  to  pay  for 
the  clothes  he  wears,  and  leaves  his  children  to  be  edu- 
cated by  any  one  who  takes  a  fancy  for  doing  so  ;  who 
violates  all  the  dictates  of  common  morality  and  common 
prudence,  and  blasphemes  because  he  gets  into  trouble  by 
doing  so ;  who  will  not  dress,  or  eat,  or  sleep  like  other 
men  ;  who  wears  round  jackets  to  annoy  his  wife,  and 
scribbles  Atheist  after  his  name  in  traveller's  books  ;  and 
in  brief,  who  is  distinguished  by  no  characteristic  so 
marked  as  the  entire  absence  of  common  sense.  I  think, 
reader,  that  if  you  were  sickened  by  a  visit  of  a  month's 
duration  from  one  of  these  geniuses  you  would  resolve 
that  for  the  remainder  of  your  life  only  dull,  commonplace, 
respectable  mortals  should  ever  come  under  your  roof. 
Let  us  be  thankful  that  the  days  in  which  high  talent 
was  generally  associated  with  such  eccentricities  are 
happily  passing  away.  Clever  men  are  now  content  to 
dress,  look,  and  talk  like  beings  of  this  world  ;  and  above 
'all,  they  appear  to  understand  that  however  clever  a  man 
may  be,  that  is  no  reason  why  he  should  not  pay  his  butch- 
er's bill.     How  fine  a  character  was  that  of  Sir  Walter 


404       CONCERNING  THE  DIGNITY   OF  DULNESS. 

Scott  combining  homely  sense  with  great  genius  !  And 
how  different  from  the  hectic,  morbid,  unprincipled,  and 
indeed  blackguard  mental  organization  of  various  brilliant 
men  of  the  last  age,  was  Shakspeare's  calm  and  well- 
balanced  mind  !  It  is  only  the  second-rate  genius  who  is 
eccentric,  and  only  the  tenth-rate  who  is  unintelligible. 

But  if  one  is  driven  to  a  warm  sympathy  with  the 
humdrum  and   decently  dull,  by  contemplating  the  ab- 
surdities and  vagaries  of  men  of  real  genius,  even  more 
decidedly  is  that  result  produced  by  contemplating  the 
ridiculous  little  curvetings    and   prancings  of  affectedly 
eccentric  men  of  no  genius.     You  know,  my  reader,  the 
provincial  celebrity  of  daily  life  ;  you  know  what  a  nui- 
sance he  is.     You  know  how  almost  every  little  country 
town  in  Britain  has  its  eminent  man  —  its  man  of  letters. 
He  has  written  a  book,  or  it  is  whispered  that  he  writes 
in    certain    periodicals,  and   simple  human  beings,  who 
know  nothing  of  proof-sheets,  look  upon  him  with  a  cer- 
tain awe.     He  varies  in  age  and  appearance.     If  young, 
he  wears  a  moustache  and  long,  dishevelled  hair ;  if  old, 
a  military  cloak,  which   he   disposes  in  a  brigand  form. 
He  walks  the  street  with  an  abstracted  air,  as  though  his 
thoughts  were  wandering  beyond  the  reach  of  the  throng. 
He  is  fond  of  solitude,  and  he  gratifies  his  taste  by  going 
to  the  most  frequented  places  within  reach,  and  there  as- 
suming a  look  of  rapt  isolation.     Sometimes  he  may  be 
seen  to  gesticulate  wildly,  and  to  dig  his  umbrella  into  the 
pavement  as  though   it  were  a  foeman's   breast.     Occa- 
sionally moody  laughter  may  be  heard  to  proceed  from 
him,  as  from  one  haunted  by  fearful  thoughts.     His  fat 
and  rosy  countenance  somewhat  belies  the  anguish  which 
is  preying  upon  his  vitals.     He  goes  much  to  tea-parties, 
where  he  tells  the  girls  that  the  bloom  of  life  has  gone  for 


CONCEENING  THE  DIGNITY   OF  DULNESS.       405 

him,  and  drops  dark  hints  of  the  mental  agony  he  en- 
dures in  reviewing  his  earlier  life.  He  bids  them  not  to 
ask  what  is  the  grief  that  consumes  him,  but  to  be  thank- 
ful that  they  do  not,  cannot  know.  He  drops  hints 
how  the  spectres  of  the  past  haunt  him  at  the  midnight 
hour :  how  conscience  smites  him  with  chilly  hand  for  his 
youthful  sins.  The  truth  is  that  he  was  always  a  very 
quiet  lad,  and  never  did  any  harm  to  anybody.  Occa- 
sionally, when  engaged  in  conversation  with  some  one  on 
whom  he  wishes  to  make  an  impression,  he  exclaims, 
suddenly,  '  Hold !  let  me  register  that  thought.'  He 
pauses  for  a  minute,  gazing  intently  on  the  heavens  ;  then 
exclaims,  ''Tis  done!'  and  takes  up  the  conversation 
where  it  was  interrupted.  He  fancies  that  his  compan- 
ion thinks'  him  a  great  genius.  His  companion,  in  fact, 
thinks  him  a  poor  silly  fool. 

And  now,  my  friend,  turning  away  from  these  matters, 
let  us  sit  down  on  this  large  stone,  warm  in  the  April  sun- 
shine, by  the  river  side.  Swiftly  the  river  glides  away. 
The  sky  is  bright  blue,  the  water  is  crystal  clear,  and  a 
soft  wind  comes  through  those  budding  branches.  In  the 
field  on  the  other  side  I  see  a  terrier  and  a  cow.  The 
terrier  frisks  about ;  solemnly  stands  the  cow.  Let  us 
think  here  for  a  while ;  we  need  not  talk.  And  for  an  ac- 
companiment to  the  old  remembrances  which  such  a  day 
as  this  brings  back,  let  us  have  the  sound  of  that  flowing 
river. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

"WAS  sitting,  on  a  very  warm  and  bright 
summer  morning,  upon  a  gravestone  in  the 
churchyard.  It  was  a  flat  gravestone,  ele- 
vated upon  four  little  pillars,  and  covering 
the  spot  where  sleeps  the  mortal  part  of  a  venerable  cler- 
gyman who  preceded  me  in  my  parish,  and  who  held  the 
charge  of  it  for  sixty  years.  I  had  gone  down  to  the 
churchyard,  as  usual,  for  a  while  after  breakfast,  with  a 
little  companion,  who  in  those  days  was  generally  with 
me  wherever  I  went.  And  while  she  was  walking  about, 
attended  by  a  solemn  dog,  I  sat  down  in  the  sunshine  on 
the  stone,  gray  with  lichen,  and  green  with  moss.  I 
thought  of  the  old  gentleman  who  had  slept  below  for  fifty 
years.  I  wondered  if  he  had  sometimes  come  to  the 
churchyard  after  breakfast  before  he  began  his  task  of 
sermon-writing.  I  reflected  how  his  heart,  mouldered 
into  dust,  was  now  so  free  from  all  the  little  heats  and 
worries  which  will  find  their  way  into  even  the  quietest 
life  in  this  world.  And  sitting  there,  I  put  my  right  hand 
upon  the  mossy  stone.  The  contrast  of  the  hand  upon  the 
green  surface  caughl  the  eye  of  my  companion,  who  was 
not  four  years  old.  She  came  slowly  up,  and  laid  down  her 
own  hand  beside  mine  on  the  mossy  expanse.    And  after 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  407 

looking  at  it  in  various  ways  for  several  minutes,  and  con- 
trasting her  own  little  hand  with  the  weary  one  which  is 
now  writing  this  page,  she  asked,  thoughtfully  and  doubt- 
fully, —  Was  your  hand  ever  a  little  hand  like  mine  ? 

Yes,  I  said,  as  I  spread  it  out  on  the  stone,  and  looked 
at  it :  it  seems  a  very  short  time  since  that  was  a  little 
hand  like  yours.  It  was  a  fat  little  hand:  not  the 
least  like  those  thin  fingers  and  many  wrinkles  now. 
When  it  grew  rather  bigger,  the  fingers  had  generally 
various  deep  cuts,  got  in  making  and  rigging  ships  :  those 
were  the  days  when  I  intended  to  be  a  sailor.  It  grad- 
ually grew  bigger,  as  all  little  hands  will  do,  if  spared  in 
this  world.  And  now,  it  has  done  a  great  many  things. 
It  has  smoothed  the  heads  of  many  children,  and  the 
noses  of  various  horses.  It  has  travelled,  I  thought  to 
myself,  along  thousands  of  written  pages.  It  has  paid 
away  money,  and  occasionally  received  it.  In  many  things 
that  hand  has  fallen  short,  I  thought ;  yet  several  things 
which  that  hand  found  to  do,  it  did  with  its  might. 
So  here,  I  thought,  were  three  hands,  not  far  apart. 
There  was  the  little  hand  of  infancy ;  four  daisies  Avere 
lying  near  it  on  the  gravestone  where  it  was  laid  down 
to  compare  with  mine.  Then  the  rather  skinny  and  not 
very  small  hand,  which  is  doing  now  the  work  of  life. 
And  a  couple  of  yards  beneath,  there  was  another  hand, 
whose  work  was  over.  It  was  a  hand  which  had  written 
many  sermons,  preached  in  that  plain  church ;  which  had 
turned  over  the  leaves  of  the  large  pulpit-Bible  (very 
old  and  shabby)  which  I  turn  over  now ;  which  had  of- 
ten opened  the  door  of  the  house  where  now  I  live.  And 
when  I  got  up  from  the  gravestone,  and  was  walking 
quietly  homeward,  many  thoughts  came  into  my  mind 
Concerning  Growing  Old. 


408  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

And,  indeed,  many  of  the  most  affecting  thoughts  which 
can  ever  enter  the  human  mind  are  concerning  the  lapse 
of  Time,  and  the  traces  which  its  lapse  leaves  upon  hu- 
man beings.  There  is  something  that  touches  us  in  the 
bare  thought  of  Growing  Old.  I  know  a  house  on  cer- 
tain of  whose  walls  there  hang  portraits  of  members  of 
the  family  for  many  years  back.  It  is  not  a  grand  house, 
where,  to  simple  minds,  the  robes  of  brocade  and  the 
suits  of  armour  fail  to  carry  home  the  idea  of  real  human 
beings.  It  is  the  house  of  a  not  wealthy  gentleman. 
The  portraits  represent  people  whose  minds  did  not  run 
much  upon  deep  speculations  or  upon  practical  politics ; 
but  who,  no  doubt,  had  many  thoughts  as  to  how  they 
should  succeed  in  fretting;  the  ends  to  meet.  With  such 
people  does  the  writer  feel  at  home :  with  such,  probably, 
does  the  majority  of  his  readers.  I  remember,  there,  the 
portrait  of  a  frail  old  lady,  plainly  on  the  furthest  con- 
fines of  life.  More  than  fourscore  years  had  left  their 
trace  on  the  venerable  head  :  you  could  fancy  you  saw 
the  aged  hands  shaking.  Opposite  there  hung  the  pic- 
ture of  a  blooming  girl,  in  the  fresh  May  of  beauty.  The 
blooming  girl  was  the  mother  of  the  venerable  dame  of 
fourscore.  Painting  catches  but  a  glimpse  of  time  ;  but 
it  keeps  that  glimpse.  On  the  canvas  the  face  never 
grows  old.  As  Dekker  has  it,  /TFalse  colours  last  after 
the  true  be  fled.'  I  have  often  looked  at  the  two  pictures, 
in  a  confused  sort  of  reverie.  If  you  ask  what  it  is  that 
I  thought  of  in  looking  at  them,  I  truly  cannot  tell  you. 
The  fresh  young  beauty  was  the  mother  :  the  aged  grand- 
dame  was  the  child  :  that  was  really  all.  But  there  are 
certain  thoughts  upon  which  you  can  vaguely  brood  for  a 
long  time.  t 

You   remember  reading  how   upon   a   day,  not  many 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  409 

years  since,  certain  miners,  working  far  under  ground, 
came  upon  the  body  of  a  poor  fellow  who  had  perished 
in  the  suffocating  pit  forty  years  before.  Some  chemical 
agent,  to  which  the  body  had  been  subjected  —  an  agent 
prepared  in  the  laboratory  of  nature  —  had  effectually  ar- 
rested the  progress  of  decay.  They  brought  it  up  to  the 
surface  :  and  for  a  while,  till  it  crumbled  away,  through 
exposure  to  the  atmosphere,  it  lay  there,  the  image  of  a 
fine  sturdy  young  man.  No  convulsion  had  passed 
over  the  face  in  death  :  the  features  were  tranquil ;  the 
hair  was  black  as  jet.  No  one  recognized  the  face  :  a 
generation  had  grown  up  since  the  day  on  which  the 
miner  went  down  his  shaft  for  the  last  time.  But  a  tot- 
tering, old  woman,  who  had  hurried  from  her  cottage  at 
hearing  the  news,  came  up  :  and  she  knew  again  the  face 
which  through  all  these  years  she  had  never  quite  for- 
got. The  poor  miner  was  to  have  been  her  husband  the 
day  after  that  on  which  he  died.  They  were  rough  peo- 
ple, of  course,  who  were  looking  on :  a  liberal  education 
and  refined  feelings  are  not  deemed  essential  to  the  man 
whose  work  it  is  to  get  up  coals,  or  even  tin  :  but  there 
were  no  dry  eyes  there  when  the  gray-headed  old  pilgrim 
cast  herself  upon  the  youthful  corpse,  and  poured  out  to 
its  deaf  ear  many  words  of  endearment,  unused  for  forty 
years.  It  was  a  touching  contrast :  the  one  so  old,  the 
other  so  young.  They  had  both  been  young,  these  long 
years  ago:  but  time  had  gone  on  with  the  living,  and 
stood  still  with  the  dead.  It  is  difficult  to  account  for  the 
precise  kind  and  degree  of  feeling  with  which  Ave  should 
have  witnessed  the  little  picture.  I  state  the  fact :  I  can 
say  no  more.  I  mention  it  in  proof  of  my  principle,  that 
a  certain  vague  pensiveness  is  the  result  of  musing  upon 
the  lapse  of  time  ;  and  a  certain  undefinable  pathos  of 


410  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

any  incident  which  brings  strongly  home  to  ns  that  lapse 

and  its  effects. 

'  In  silence  Matthew  lay,  and  eyed 

The  spring  beneath  the-  tree: 
And  thus  the  dear  old  man  replied, 
The  gray-haired  man  of  glee : 

•  ••  No  check,  no  stay,  that  streamlet  fears  — 
How  merrily  it  goes? 
'Twill  murmur  on  a  thousand  years, 
And  flow  as  now  it  flows. 

'  "  And  here,  on  this  delightful  day, 
I  cannot  choose  but  think 
How  oft,  a  vigorous  man,  I  lay 
Beside  this  fountain's  brink. 

' "  My  eyes  are  dim  with  childish  tears, 
My  heart  is  idly  stirred, 
For  the  same  sound  is  in  my  ears 
Which  in  those  day-  1  heard."' 

That  is  really  the  sum  of  what  is  to  be  said  on  the  sub- 
ject. And  it  has  alwavs  appeared  to  me  that  Mr.  D.ckens 
has  shown  an  amount  of  philosophical  insight  winch  does 
not  always  characterize  him.  when  he  wrote  certain  reflec- 
tion-, which  he  puts  in  the  mouth  of  one  Mr.  Roker.  who 
was  a  turnkey  in  the  Fleet  Prison.  I  do  not  know  why  it 
should  be  so  ;  but  these  words  are  to  me  more  strikingly 
truthful  than  almost  any  others  which  the  eminent  author 
ever  produced :  — 

'"You  remember  Tom  Martin,   Neddy?      Bless   my  dear  eyes," 
»id  Mr.  Roker,  shaking  hi-  head  -lowly  from  side  to  side,  and  gazing 
of  the  grated  window  before  him,  as  if  he  were  fond- 
lvi.  aceful  scene  of  his  early  youth,  "it  seems  but  yes- 

terday that  lie  whopped  the  coal-heaver  down  at  the  Fox-under-the- 
Hill  by  the  wharf  there.  1  think  I  can  see  him  QOW,  a  coming  up  the 
Strand  between  two  street-keepers,  a  little  sobered  by  the  braising, 
with  a  patch  o'winegar  and  brown  paper  over  his  right  eyelid,  ana 
that  'ere  lovely  bull-dog,  a,  pinned  the  little  boy  arfrward-  ^follow- 
ing at  his  heels.     What  a  rum  thing  Time  is,  aint  it,  Neddy  t 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  411 

Here  we  find,  truthfully  represented,  an  essential  mood 
of  the  human  mind.  It  is  a  more  pleasing  picture,  per- 
haps, that  comes  back  upon  us  in  startling  freshness,  mak- 
ing us  wonder  if  it  is  really  so  long  ago  since  then,  and 
our  sentiment  with  regard  to  time  is  more  elegantly  ex- 
pressed ;  but  it  really  comes  to  this.  You  can  say  no 
more  of  time  than  that  it  is  a  strange,  unclefinable,  inexpli- 
cable thing ;  and  when,  by  some  caprice  of  memory,  some 
long-departed  scene  comes  vividly  back,  what  more  def- 
inite thing  can  you  do  than  just  shake  your  head,  and 
gaze  abstractedly,  like  Mr.  Roker?  Like  distant  bells 
upon  the  breeze,  some  breath  from  childhood  shows  us 
plainly  for  a  moment  the  little  thing  that  was  ourself. 
What  moi*e  can  you  do  but  look  at  the  picture,  and  feel 
that  it  is  strange  ?  More  important  things  have  been  for- 
gotten ;  but  you  remember  how,  when  you  were  four 
years  old,  you  ran  a  race  along  a  path  with  a  green  slope 
beside  it,  and  watched  the  small  shadow  keeping  pace 
with  you  along  the  green  slope  ;  or  you  recall  the  precise 
feeling  with  which  you  sat  down  in  the  railway  carriage 
on  the  day  when  you  first  came  home  from  school  for  the 
holidays,  and  felt  the  train  glide  away.  And  when  these 
things  return,  what  can  you  do  but  lean  your  head  upon 
your  hand,  and  vaguely  muse  and  feel?  I  have  always 
much  admired  the  truthful  account  of  the  small  boy's 
fancies,  as  he  sits  and  gazes  into  the  glowing  fire  '  with 
his  wee  round  face.'  Mr.  Ballantine  is  a  true  philoso- 
pher as  well  as  a  true  poet. 

'  For  a'  sae  sage  he  looks,  what  can  the  laddie  ken  ? 
He's  thinkin'  upon  naething,  like  mony  mighty  men !  ' 

We   can  all  'think  of  naething,'  and  think  of  it  for  a 

long  time,  while  yet  the  mind  is  by  no  means  a  blank. 

It  is  very  easy,  in  one  sense,  to  grow  old.     You  have 


412  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

but  to  sit  still  and  do  nothing,  and  time  passing  over  you 
will  make  you  old.  But  to  grow  old  wisely  and  genially, 
is  one  of  the  most  difficult  tasks  to  which  a  human  being 
can  ever  set  himself.  It  is  very  hard  to  make  up  your 
mind  to  it.  Some  men  grow  old,  struggling  and  recalci- 
trating, dragged  along  against  their  will,  clinging  to  each 
birthday  as  the  drowning  man  catches  at  an  overhanging 
bough.  Some  folk  grow  old,  gracefully  and  fittingly.  I 
think  that,  as  a  general  rule,  the  people  who  least  reluc- 
tantly grow  old,  are  worthy  men  and  women,  who  see 
their  children  growing  up  into  all  that  is  good  and  ad- 
mirable, with  equal  steps  to  those  by  which  they  feel 
themselves  to  be  growing  downward.  A  better,  nobler, 
and  happier  self,  they  think,  will  take  their  place  ;  and  in 
all  the  success,  honour,  and  happiness  of  that  new  self,  they 
can  feel  a  purer  and  worthier  pride  than  they  ever  felt 
in  their  own.  But  the  human  being  who  has  no  one  to 
represent  him  when  he  is  gone,  will  naturally  wish  to  put 
off  the  time  of  his  going  as  long  as  may  be.  It  seems 
to  be  a  difficult  thing  to  hit  the  medium  between  clinirins 

O  DC1 

foolishly  to  youth  and  making  an  affected  parade  of  age. 
Entire  naturalness  upon  this  subject  appears  to  be  very 
hard  of  attainment.  You  know  how  many  people,  men 
as  well  as  women,  pretend  to  be  younger  than  they  really 
are.  I  have  found  various  motives  lead  to  this  pretence. 
I  have  known  men,  distinguished  at  a  tolerably  early  age 
in  some  walk  of  intellectual  exertion,  who  in  announc- 
ing their  age  (which  they  frequently  did  without  any 
necessity),  were  wont  to  deduct  three  or  five  years 
from  the  actual  tale,  plainly  with  the  intention  of 
making  their  talent  and  skill  more  remarkable,  by 
adding  the  element  of  these  being  developed  at  a 
wonderfully  early  stage  of    life.     They    wished    to    be 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  413 

recognized  as  infant  phenomena.  To  be  an  eloquent 
preacher  is  always  an  excellent  thing ;  but  how  much 
more  wonderful  if  the  preacher  be  no  more  than  twenty- 
two  or  twenty-three.  To  repeat  The  Battle  of  Hohenlin- 
den  is  a  worthy  achievement,  but  the  foolish  parent  pats 
his  child's  head  with  special  exultation,  as  he  tells  you 
that  his  child,  who  has  just  repeated  that  popular  poem, 
is  no  more  than  two  years  old.  It  is  not  improbable  that 
the  child's  real  age  is  two  years  and  eleven  months.  It  is 
very  likely  that  the  preacher's  real  age  is  twenty-eight. 
I  remember  hearing  of  a  certain  clerical  person  who,  pre- 
suming on  a  very  youthful  aspect,  gave  himself  out  as 
twenty-four,  when  in  fact  he  was  thirty.  1  happened  ac- 
cidentally to  see  the  register  of  that  individual's  baptism, 
which  took  place  five  years  before  the  period  at  which  he 
said  he  was  born.  The  fact  of  this  document's  existence 
was  made  known  to  the  man,  by  way  of  correcting  his 
singular  mistake.  He  saw  it ;  but  he  clung  to  the  fond 
delusion  ;  and  a  year  or  two  afterwards  I  read  with  much 
amusement  in  a  newspaper  some  account  of  a  speech 
made  by  him,  into  which  account  was  incorporated  an  as- 
surance that  the  speech  was  the  more  remarkable,  inas- 
much as  the  youthful  orator  was  no  more  than  twenty- 
four  !  Very,  very  contemptible,  you  say  ;  and  I  entirely 
agree  with  you.  And  apart  from  the  dishonesty,  I  do 
not  think  that  judicious  people  will  value  very  highly  the 
crude  fruit  which  has  been  forced  to  a  certain  ripeness 
before  its  time.  Let  us  have  the  mature  thing.  Give  us 
intellectual  beef  rather  than  intellectual  veal.  In  the  do- 
main of  poetry,  great  things  have  occasionally  been  done 
at  a  very  early  age  ;  for  you  do  not  insist  upon  sound  and 
judicious  views  of  life  in  poetry.  For  plain  sense  and 
practical  guidance,  you  go  elsewhere.  But  in  every  other 


414  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

department  of  literature,  the  value  of  a  production  is  in 
direct  proportion  to  the  amount  of  the  experience  which  it 
embodies.  A  man  can  speak  with  authority  only  of  that 
which  he  has  himself  felt  and  known.  A  man  cannot 
paint  portraits  till  he  has  seen  faces.  And  all  feeling, 
and  most  moods  of  mind,  will  be  very  poorly  described 
by  one  who  takes  his  notion  of  them  at  second-hand. 
When  you  are  very  young  yourself,  you  may  read  with 
sympathy  the  writings  of  very  young  men  ;  but  when  you 
have  reached  maturity,  and  learned  by  experience  the 
details  and  realities  of  life,  you  will  be  conscious  of  a  cer- 
tain indefinable  want  in  such  writings.  And  I  do  not 
know  that  this  defect  can  be  described  more  definitely 
than  by  saying  that  the  entire  thing  is  veal,  not  beef. 
You  have  the  immature  animal.  You  have  the  '  berries 
harsh  and  crude.' 

But  long  after  the  period  at  which  it  is  possible  to  as- 
sume the  position  of  the  infant  phenomenon,  you  still  find 
many  men  anxious  to  represent  themselves  as  a  good  deal 
younger  than  they  are.  To  the  population  of  Britain  gen- 
erally, ten  years  elapse  before  one  census  is  followed  by  the 
next ;  but  some  persons,  in  these  ten  years,  grow  no  more 
than  two  or  three  years  older.  Let  me  confess  to  an  ex- 
treme abhorrence  of  such  men.  Their  conduct  affects  me 
with  an  indescribable  disgust.  T  dislike  it  more  than 
many  things  which  in  themselves  are  probably  more  evil 
morally.  Such  men  are,  in  the  essential  meaning  of  the 
word,  humbugs.  They  are  shams ;  impostures ;  false 
pretences.  They  are  an  embodied  falsehood  ;  their  very 
personality  is  a  lie ;  and  you  don't  know  what  about  them 
may  next  prove  to  be  a  deception.  Looking  at  a  man 
wlio  says  lie  is  forty-three  when  in  fact  he  is  above  sixty, 
I  suspect  him  all  over.     I  am  in  doubt  whether  his  hair, 


CONCERNING  GROWING   OLD.  415 

his  teeth,  his  eyes,  are  real.    I  do  not  know  whether  that 
breadth  of  chest  be  the  developement  of  manly  bone  and 
muscle,  or  the  skilful  padding  of  the  tailor.     I  am  not 
sure  how  much  is  the  man,  and  how  much  the  work  of  his 
valet.     I  suspect  that  his  whiskers  and  moustache  are 
dyed.      I  look   at  his  tight  boots,  and  think  how  they 
must  be  tormenting  his  poor  old  corny  feet.     I  admire 
his  affected  buoyancy  of  manner,  and  think  how  the  mis- 
erable creature  must  collapse  when  he  finds  himself  alone, 
and  is   no  longer  compelled  by  the  presence  of  company 
to  put  himself  on  the  stretch,  and  carry  on  that  wretched 
acting.     When  I  see  the  old  reptile  whispering  in  a  cor-\ 
ner  to  a  girl  of  eighteen,  or  furtively  squeezing  her  in  a  \ 
waltz,  I  should  like  extremely  to  take  him  by  the  neck, 
and  shake  him  till  he  came  into  the  pieces  of  which  he 
is  made  up.     And  when  I  have  heard  (long  ago)  such  a 
one,  with  a  hideous  gloating  relish  telling  a  profane  or  in-  t 
decent  story  ;  or  instilling  cynical  and  impious  notions  of 
life  and  things   into  the  minds  of  young  lads  ;  or  (more 
disgusting  still)  using  phrases  of  double  meaning  in   the 
presence  of  innocent  young  women,  and  enjoying  their 
innocent  ignorance  of  his  sense  ;  I  have  thought  that  I 
was  beholding  as  degraded  a  phase  of  human  nature  as 
you  will  find  on  the  face  of  this  sinful  world.     O  vener- 
able age,  gray,  wise,  kindly,  sympathetic ;  before  which  I 
shall  never  cease  reverently  to  bend,  respecting   even 
what  I  may  (wrongly  perhaps)  esteem  your  prejudices  ; 
that  you  should  be  caricatured  and  degraded  in  that  foul, 
old  leering  satyr !     And  if  there  be  a  thing  on  earth  that 
disgusts  one  more  than  even  the  thought  of  the  animal 
himself,  it  is  to  think  of  ministers  of  religion  (prudently 
pious)  who  will  wait  nieekly  in  his  ante-chamber  and  sit 
humbly  at  his  table,  because  he  is  an  earl  or  a  duke  ! 


416  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

But  though  all  this  be  so,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  I 
interpret  the  clinging  to  youth,  in  which  there  is  nothing 
contemptible  about  it,  but  much  that  is  touching  and 
pleasing.  I  abominate  the  padded,  rouged,  dyed  old 
sham  ;  but  I  heartily  respect  the  man  or  woman,  pensive 
and  sad,  as  some  little  circumstance  has  impressed  upon 
them  the  fact  that  they  are  growing  old.  A  man  or 
woman  is  a  fool,  who  is  indignant  at  being  called  the  old 
lady  or  the  old  gentleman  when  these  phrases  state  the 
truth ;  but  there  is  nothing  foolish  or  unworthy  when 
some  such  occurrence  brings  it  home  to  us,  with  some- 
thing of  a  shock,  that  we  are  no  longer  reckoned  among 
the  young,  and  that  the  innocent  and  impressionable  days 
of  childhood  (so  well  remembered)  are  beginning  to  be 
far  away.  We  are  drawing  nearer,  we  know,  to  certain 
solemn  realities  of  which  we  speak  much  and  feel  little ; 
the  undiscovered  country  (humbly  sought  through  the 
pilgrimage  of  life)  is  looming  in  the  distance  before.  We 
feel  that  life  is  not  long,  and  is  not  commonplace,  when 
it  is  regarded  as  the  portal  to  eternity.  And  probably 
nothing  will  bring  back  the  season  of  infancy  and  early 
youth  upon  any  thoughtful  man's  mind  so  vividly  as  the 
sense  that  he  is  growing  old.  How  short  a  time  since 
then !  You  look  at  your  great  brown  hand.  It  seems 
but  yesterday  since  a  boy-companion  (gray  now)  tried  to 
print  your  name  upon  the  little  paw,  and  there  was  not 
room.  You  remember  it  (is  it  five-and-twenty  years 
since?)  as  it  looked  when  laid  on  the  head  of  a  friendly 
dog,  two  or  three  days  before  you  found  him  poisoned  and 
dead;  and  helped,  not  without  tears,  to  bury  him  in  the 
garden  under  an  apple-tree.  You  see,  as  plainly  as  if 
you  saw  it  now,  his  brown  eye,  as  it  looked  at  you  in  life 
for  the  last  time.   And  as  you  feel  these  things,  you  quite 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  417 

unaffectedly  and  sincerely  put  off,  time  after  time,  the 
period  at  which  you  will  accept  it  as  a  fact,  that  you  are 
old.  Twenty-eight,  thirty,  thirty-five,  forty-eight,  mark 
years  on  reaching  which  you  will  still  feel  yourself 
young ;  many  men  honestly  think  that  sixty-five  or 
sixty-eight  is  the  prime  of  life.  A  less  amiable  ac- 
companiment of  this  pleasing  belief  is  often  found  in  a 
disposition  to  call  younger  men  (and  not  very  young) 
boys.  I  have  heard  that  word  uttered  in  a  very  spiteful 
tone,  as  though  it  were  a  name  of  great  reproach.  There 
are  few  epithets  which  I  have  ever  heard  applied  in  a 
manner  betokening  greater  bitterness,  than  that  of  a  clev- 
er lad.  You  remember  how  Sir  Robert  Walpole  hurled 
the  charge  of  youth  against  Pitt.  You  remember  how 
Pitt  (or  Dr.  Johnson  for  him)  defended  himself  with 
great  force  of  argument  against  the  imputation.  Possibly 
in  some  cases  envy  is  at  the  root  of  the  matter.  Not 
every  man  has  the  magnanimity  of  Sir  Bulwer  Lytton, 
who  tells  us  so  frankly  and  so  often  how  much  he  would 
like  to  be  young  again  if  he  could. 

To  grow  old  is  so  serious  a  matter,  that  it  always  ap- 
pears to  me  as  if  there  were  something  like  profanation 
in  putting  the  fact  or  its  attendant  circumstances  in  a 
ludicrous  manner.  It  is  not  a  fit  thing  to  joke  about.  A 
funny  man  might  write  a  comic  description  of  the  way  in 
which  starving  sailors  on  a  raft  used  up  their  last  poor 
allotments  of  bread  and  water,  and  .watched  with  sinking 
hearts  their  poor  stock  decrease.  Or  he  might  record  in 
a  fashion  that  some  people  would  laugh  at,  the  gradual 
sinking  of  a  family  which  had  lost  its  means  through 
degree  after  degree  in  the  social  scale,  till  the  work- 
house was  reached  at  last.  But  I  do  not  think  there  is 
anything  really  amusing  in  the  spectacle  of  a  human 
27 


418  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

being  giving  up  hold  after  hold  to  which  he  had  clung,  and 
sinking  always  lower  and  lower ;  and  there  is  no  doubt 
that,  in  a  physical  sense,  we  soon  come  to  do  all  thai  in 
the  process  of  growing  old.  And  though  you  may  put 
each  little  mortification,  each  petty  coming  down,  in  a 
way  amusing  to  bystanders,  it  should  always  be  remem- 
bered that  each  may  imply  a  severe  pang  on  the  part  of 
the  man  himself.  We  smile  when  Mr.  Dickens  tells  us 
concerning  his  hero,  Mr.  Tupman,  that 

'Time  and  feeding  had  expanded  that  once  romantic  form;  the 
black  silk  waistcoat  had  become  more  and  more  developed;  inch  by 
inch  had  the  gold  watch-chain  beneath  it  disappeared  from  within  the 
range  of  Tupman's  vision;  and  gradually  had  the  capacious  chin  en- 
croached upon  the  borders  of  the  white  cravat;  but  the  soul  of  Tup- 
man  had  known  no  change.' 

Now,  although  Mr  Tupman  was  an  exceedingly  fat 
man  physically,  and  morally  (to  say  the  truth)  a  very 
great  fool,  you  may  rely  upon  it  that  as  each  little 
circumstance  had  occurred  which  his  biographer  has 
recorded,  it  would  be  a  very  serious  circumstance  in  the 
feeling  of  poor  Tupman  himself.  And  this  not  nearly  so 
much  for  the  little  personal  mortification  implied  in  each 
step  of  expanding  bulk  and  lessening  agility,  but  because 
each  would  be  felt  as  a  milestone,  marking  the  progress 
of  Tupman  from  Ins  cradle  to  his  grave.  Each  would 
be  something  to  signify  that  the  innocence  and  freshness 
of  childhood  were  lift  80  much  further  behind,  and  that 
the  reality  of  life  was  growing  more  hard  and  prosaic.  It 
is  -nine  feeling  like  this  which  makes  it  a  sad  thing  to 
lay  aside  an  old  coat  which  one  has  worn  for  a  long  time. 
It  is  a  decided  step.  Of  course  we  all  know  that  time 
goes  on  as  fasl  when  its  progress  is  unmarked  as  when  it 
is  noted.     And  each  day  that  the  coat  went  on  was  an 


CONCERNING   GROWING  OLD.  410 

onward  stage  as  truly  as  the  clay  when  the  coat  went  off^ 
but  in  this  world  we  must  take  things  as  they  are  to  our 
feelings  :  and  there  is  something  that  very  strongly  ap- 
peals to  our  feeling  in  a  decided  beginning  or  a  decided 
ending.  Do  not  laugh,  thoughtless  folk,  at  the  poor  old 
maid,  who  persists  in  going  bareheaded  long  after  she 
ought  to  have  taken  to  caps.  You  cannot  know  how 
much  farther  away  that  change  would  make  her  days  of 
childhood  seem :  how  much  more  remote  and  dim  and 
faint  it  would  make  the  little  life,  the  face,  the  voice  of 
the  young  brother  or  sister  that  died  when  they  both 
were  children  together.  Do  not  fancy  that  it  is  mere 
personal  vanity  which  prompts  that  clinging  to  apparent 
youth  :  feelings  which  are  gentle,  pure,  and  estimable 
may  protest  against  any  change  from  the  old  familiar 
way.  Do  not  smile  at  the  phrases  of  the  house  when 
there  are  gray-headed  boys,  and  girls  on  the  lower  side  of 
forty-five  :  it  would  be  a  terrible  sacrifice,  it  would  make 
a  terrible  change,  to  give  up  the  old  names.  You  thought- 
less young  people  are  ready  to  deride  Mr.  Smith  when 
he  appears  in  his  new  wig.  You  do  not  think  how,  when 
poor  Smith  went  to  Truefitt's  to  get  it,  he  thought  many 
thoughts  of  the  long-departed  mother,  whom  he  remem- 
bers dimly  on  her  sick-bed  smoothing  down  her  little 
boy's  hair,  thick  enough  then.  And  when  you  see  Mr. 
Robinson  puffing  up  the  hill  with  purpled  face  and  labour- 
ing breath,  do  you  think  that  poor  Robinson  does  not 
remember  the  days  when  he  was  the  best  runner  at 
school  ?  Perhaps  he  tells  you  at  considerable  length 
about  these  days.  Well,  listen  patiently  :  some  day  you 
may  be  telling  long  stories  too.  There  is  a  peculiar  sad- 
ness in  thinking  of  exertions  of  body  or  mind  to  which 
we  were  once  equal,  but  to  which  we  are  not  equal  now. 
You  remember  the  not  very  earnest  Swift,  conscious  that 


420  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

the  '  decay  at  the  top '  had  begun,  bursting  into  tears  as 
he  read  one  of  his  early  works,  and  exclaiming,  '  Heav- 
ens, what  a  genius  I  had  when  I  wrote  that ! '  "What  is 
there  more  touching  than  the  picture  of  poor  Sir  Walter, 
wheeled  like  a  child  in  a  chair  through  the  rooms  at 
Abbotsford,  and  suddenly  exclaiming,  '  Come,  this  is  sad 
idleness,'  and  insisting  on  beginning  to  dictate  a  new  tale, 
in  which  the  failing  powers  of  the  great  magician  ap- 
peared so  sadly,  that  large  as  its  marketable  value  would 
have  been,  it  never  was  suffered  to  appear  in  print. 
Probably  the  sense  of  enfeebled  faculties  is  a  sadder 
thing  than  the  sense  of  diminished  physical  power.  Prob- 
ably Sir  Isaac  Newton,  in  his  later  days,  when  he  sat 
down  to  his  own  mathematical  demonstrations,  and  could 
not  understand  them  or  follow  them,  felt  more  bitterly 
the  wear  of  advancing  time  than  the  gray-headed  High- 
lander sitting  on  a  stone  at  his  cottage  door  in  the  sun- 
shine, and  telling  you  how,  long  ago,  he  could  breast  the 
mountain  with  the  speed  of  a  deer ;  or  than  the  crippled 
soldier,  who  leans  upon  his  crutch,  and  tells  how,  many 
years  ago,  that  shaky  old  hand  had  cut  down  the  French 
cuirassier.  But  in  either  case  it  is  a  sad  thing  to  think 
of  exertions  once  put  forth,  and  work  once  done,  which 
could  not  be  done  or  put  forth  now.  Change  for  the 
worse  is  always  a  sorrowful  thing.  And  the  aged  man, 
in  the  respect  of  physical  power,  and  the  capacity  for  in- 
tellectual exertion,  has  '  seen  better  days.'  You  do  not 
like  to  think  that  in  any  respect  you  are  falling  oft. 
You  are  not  pleased  at  being  told  that  ten  years  ago  you 
wrote  a  plainer  hand  or  spoke  in  a  rounder  voice.  It  is 
mortifying  to  find  that  whereas  you  could  once  walk  at 
five  miles  an  hour,  you  can  now  accomplish  no  more  than 
three  and  a  half.  Now,  in  a  hundred  ways,  at  every 
turn,  and  by  a  host  of  little  wounding  facts,  we  are  com- 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  421 

pelled  to  feel  as  we  grow  old  that  we  are  falling  off.     As 
the  complexion   roughens,  as  the  hair  thins   off,  as  we 
come  to  stoop,  as  we  blow  tremendously  if  we  attempt  to 
run,  the  man  of  no  more  than  middle  age  is  conscious  of 
a  bodily  decadence.      And  advancing  years  make   the 
wise  man  sadly  conscious  of  a  mental  decadence  too.    Let 
us  be  thankful  that  if  physical  and  intellectual  decline 
must  come  at  a  certain  stage  of  growing  old,  there  are 
respects  in  which,  so  long  as  we  live,  we  may  have  the 
comfort  of  thinking  that  we  are  growing  better.     The 
higher  nature  may  daily  be  reaching  a  nobler  develop- 
ment ;   when  '  heart  and  flesh  faint  and  fail,'  when  the 
clay  tenement  is  turning  frail  and   shattered,  the  better 
part  within  may  show  in  all  moral  grace  as  but  a  little 
lower  than   the  angels.     Age  need   not  necessarily  be 
'  dark  and  unlovely,'  as  Ossian  says  it  is ;  and  the  convic- 
tion that  in  some  respect,  that  in  the  most  important  of 
all  respects,  we  are  growing  better,  tends  mightily  to  strip 
age  of  that  sense  of  falling  off  which  is  the  bitterest  thing 
about  it.     And  as  the  essential  nature  of  growing  old  ;  — 
its  essence  as  a  sad  thing ;  —  lies  in  the  sense  of  deca- 
dence, the   conviction  that  in   almost  anything    we  are 
gaining  ground  has  a  wonderful  power  to  enable  us  cheer- 
fully to  grow  old.     A  man  will  contentedly  grow  fatter, 
balder,  and  puffier,  if  he  feels  assured  that  he  is  pushing 
on  to  eminence  at  the  bar  or  in  politics  ;  and  if  he  takes 
his  seat  upon  the  woolsack  even  at  the  age  of  seventy- 
five,  though  he  might  now  seek  in  vain  to  climb  the  trees 
he  climbed  in  youth,  or  to  play  at  leapfrog  as  then,  still 
he   is   conscious  that  his   life  on  the  whole  has  been  a 
progress ;  that  he  is  on  the  whole  better  now  than  he  was 
in  those  days  which  were  his  best  days  physically ;  that 
to  be  lord  chancellor,  albeit  a  venerable  one,  is,  as  the 


422  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

world  goes,  a  more  eminent  thing  than  to  be  the  gayest 
and  most  active  of  midshipmen.  And  so  on  the  whole 
he  is  content  to  grow  old,  because  he  feels  that  in  grow- 
in"-  he  has  not  on  the  whole  been  corning  down  hill. 

The  supremely  mortifying  thing  is,  to  feel  that  the 
physical  decadence  which  comes  with  growing  old,  is  not 
counterbalanced  by  any  improvement  whatsoever.  "We 
shall  not  mind  much  about  growing  less  agile  and  less 
beautiful,  if  we  think  that  we  are  growing  wiser  and  bet- 
ter. The  gouty  but  wealthy  merchant,  who  hobbles  with 
difficulty  to  his  carriage,  feels  that  after  all  he  has  made 
an  advance  upon  those  days  in  which,  if  free  from  gout, 
he  was  devoid  of  pence  ;  and  if  he  did  not  hobble,  he 
had  no  carriage  into  which  he  might  get  in  that  awkward 
manner.  The  gray-haired  old  lady  who  was  a  beauty 
once,  is  consoled  for  her  growing  old,  if  in  her  age  she  is 
admitted  to  the  society  of  the  county,  while  in  her  youth 
she  was  confined  to  the  society  of  the  town.  Make  us 
feel  that  we  are  better  in  something,  and  we  shall  be  con- 
tent to  be  worse  in  many  things  ;  but  it  is  miserable  to 
think  that  in  all  things  we  are  falling  off,  or  even  in  all 
things  standing  still.  A  man  would  be  very  much  mor- 
tified to  think  that  at  fifty  he  did  not  write  materially 
better  sermons,  essays,  or  articles  than  he  did  at  five-and- 
twenty.  In  many  things  he  knows  the  autumn  of  life  is 
a  falling-off  from  its  spring-time.  He  has  ceased  to 
dance;  his  voice  quavers  abominably  when  he  tries  to 
sing;  he  has  no  fancy  now  for  climbing  hills,  and  he 
shirks  walks  of  forty  miles  a  day.  Perhaps  deeper  wrin- 
kles have  been  traced  by  time  on  the  heart  (ban  on  the 
forehead,  and  the  early  freshness  of  feeling  is  gone.  But 
surely,  in  mellowed  experience,  in  s(,i>ered  and  sound 
views  of  things,  in  tempered  expectations,  in  patience,  in 


CONCERNING   GROWING  OLD.  423 

sympathy,  in  kindly  charity,  in  insight  into  God's  ways 
and  dealings,  he  is  better  now  a  thousand  times  than  he 
was  then.  He  has  worked  his  way  through  the  hectic 
stage  in  which  even  able  and  thoughtful  men  fancy  that 
Byron  was  a  great  poet.  A  sounder  judgment  and  a 
severer  taste  direct  him  now  ;  in  all  things,  in  short,  that 
make  the  essence  of  the  manly  natui'e,  he  is  a  better  and 
further  advanced  man  than  he  ever  was  before.  The 
physical  nature  says,  by  many  little  signs,  we  are  go- 
ing down  hill  ;  the  spiritual  nature  testifies  by  many 
noble  gains  and  acquirements,  we  are  going  onward 
and  upward  !  It  seems  to  me  that  the  clergyman's  state 
of  feeling  must  be  a  curious  one,  who,  on  a  fine  Sunday 
morning,  when  he  is  sixty,  can  take  out  of  his  drawer  a 
sermon  which  he  wrote  at  five-and-twenty,  and  go  and 
preach  it  with  perfect  approval  and  without  the  altera- 
tion of  a  word.  It  is  somewhat  mortifying,  no  doubt,  to 
look  at  a  sermon  which  you  wrote  seven  or  eight  years 
since,  aud  which  you  then  thought  brilliant  eloquence,  and 
to  find  that  in  your  present  judgment  it  is  no  better  than 
tawdry  fustian.  But  still,  my  friend,  even  though  you 
grudge  to  find  that  you  must  throw  the  sermon  aside  and 
preach  it  no  more,  are  you  not  secretly  pleased  at  this 
proof  how  much  your  mind  has  grown  in  these  years?  It 
is  pleasant  to  think  that  you  have  not  been  falling  off,  not 
standing  still.  The  wings  of  your  imagination  are  some- 
what clipped  indeed,  and  your  style  has  lost  something  of 
that  pith  which  goes  with  want  of  consideration.  Some 
youthful  judges  may  think  that  you  have  sadly  fallen  off"; 
but  you  are  content  in  the  firm  conviction  that  you  have 
vastly  improved .  It  was  veal  then :  it  is  beef  now.  I 
remember  hearing  with  great  interest  how  a  venerable 
professor  of  fourscore  wrote  in  the  last  few  weeks  of  his 


424  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

life  a  little  course  of  lectures  on  a  certain  debated  point 
of  theology.  He  had  outgrown  his  former  notions  upon 
the  subject.  The  old  man  said  his  former  lectures  upon 
it  did  not  do  him  justice.  Was  it  not  a  pleasant  sight  — 
the  aged  tree  bearing  fruit  to  the  last  ?  How  it  must 
have  pleased  and  soothed  the  good  man  amid  many 
advancing  infirmities  to  persuade  himself  (justly  or  un- 
justly) that  in  the  most  important  respect  he  was  going 
onward  still ! 

It  is  indeed  a  pleasant  sight  to  kindly  onlookers,  and 
it  is  a  sustaining  and  consoling  thing  to  the  old  man 
himself,  when  amid  physical  decadence  there  is  intellect- 
ual growth.  But  this  is  not  a  common  thing.  As  a 
general  rule  it  cannot  be  doubted  that,  intellectually,  we 
top  the  summit  sometime  before  fourscore,  and  begin 
to  go  down  hill.  I  do  not  wish  to  turn  my  essays  into 
sermons ;  or  to  push  upon  my  readers  in  Fraser  things 
more  fitly  addressed  to  my  congregation  on  Sundays : 
still,  let  me  say  that  in  the  thought  that  growing  old 
implies  at  last  a  decay  both  mental  and  bodily,  and  that 
unrelieved  going  down  is  a  very  sad  thing  to  feel  or  to 
see,  I  find  great  comfort  in  remembering  that  as  regards 
the  best  and  noblest  of  all  characteristics,  the  old  man 
may  be  progressing  to  the  last.  In  all  those  beautiful 
qualities  which  most  attract  the  love  and  reverence  of 
those  around,  and  which  fit  for  purer  and  happier  com- 
pany than  can  be  found  in  this  world,  the  aged  man  or 
woman  may  be  growing  still.  In  the  last  days,  indeed, 
it  may  be  ripening  rather  than  growing :  mellowing,  not 
expanding.  But  to  do  that  is  to  '  grow  in  grace.'  And 
doubtless  the  yellow  harvest-field  in  September  is  an 
advance  upon  the  fresh  green  blades  of  June.  You 
may  like  better   to    look  upon  the   wheat    that  is    pro- 


CONCEENING  GEOWING  OLD.  425 

gressing  towards  ripeness  ;  but  the  wheat  which  has  \ 
reached  ripeness  is  not  a  falling  off.  The  stalks  will 
not  bend  now,  without  breaking :  you  rub  the  heads, 
and  the  yellow  chaff  that  wraps  the  grain,  crumbles  off 
in  dust.  But  it  is  beyond  a  question  that  there  you 
see  wheat  at  its  best. 

Still,  not  forgetting  this,  we  must  all  feel  it  sad  to  see 
human  beings  as  they  grow  old,  retrograding  in  mate- 
rial comforts  and  advantages.  It  is  a  mournful  thing 
to  see :  a  man  grower  poorer  as  he  is  growing  older,  or 
losing  position  in  any  way.  If  it  were  in  my  power,  I 
would  make  all  barristers,  above  sixty,  judges.  They 
ought  to  be  put  in  a  situation  of  dignity  and  indepen- 
dence. You  don't  like  to  go  into  a  court  of  justice,  and 
there  behold  a  thin,  gray-headed  counsel,  somewhat 
shaken  in  nerve,  looking  rather  frail,  battling  away  with 
a  full-blooded,  confident,  hopeful,  impudent  fellow,  five- 
and-twenty  years  his  junior.  The  youthful,  big-whis- 
kered, roaring,  and  bullying  advocate  is  sure  to  be  held 
in  much  the  greater  estimation  by  attorney's  clerks. 
The  old  gentleman's  day  is  over ;  but  with  lessening 
practice  and  disappointed  hopes  he  must  drive  on  at  the 
bar  still.  I  wish  I  were  a  chief  justice,  that  by  special 
deference  and  kindliness  of  manner,  I  might  daily  soothe 
somewhat  the  feelings  of  that  aging  man.  But  it  is 
especially  in  the  case  of  the  clergy  that  one  sees  the 
painful  sight  of  men  growing  poorer  as  they  are  grow- 
ing older.  I  think  of  the  case  of  a  clergyman  who  at 
his  first  start  was  rather  fortunate  :  who  gets  a  nice 
parish  at  six-and-twenty :  I  mean  a  parish  which  is  a 
nice  one  for  a  man  of  six-and-twenty :  and  who  never 
gets  any  other  preferment,  but  in  that  parish  grows  old. 
Don't  we  all  know  how  pretty  and  elegant  everything 


426  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

was  about  him  at  first :  how  trim  and  weedless  were  his 
garden   and  shrubbery :    how  rosy  his  carpets,  how  airy 
his  window-curtains,  how  neat  though  slight  all  his  fur- 
niture :    how    graceful,    merry,  and  nicely    dressed    the 
young  girl  who   was    his   wife:     how    (besides  hosts  of 
parochial    improvements)   he    devised  numberless    little 
changes  about  his  dwelling  :    rustic  bowers,  moss-houses, 
green  mounts,  labyrinthine  walks,  fantastically  trimmed 
yews,  root-bridges   over  the  little  stream.     But  as    his 
family   increased,  his    income  stood  still.     It   was    hard 
enough    work    to    make    the    ends    meet    even  at    first, 
though  young  hearts  are  hopeful :  but  with  six  or  seven 
children,   with  boys   who  must  be  sent  to  college,  with 
girls  who  must  be  educated  as  ladies,  with  the  prices  of 
all  things  ever  increasing,  with   multiplying  bills  from 
the    shoemaker,    tailor,    dressmaker ;    the    poor   parson 
grows  yearly  poorer.     The  rosy  face  of  the  young  wife 
has  now  deep  lines  of  care :    the  weekly  sermon  is  dull 
and  spiritless  :  the  parcel  of  books  comes  no  more :    the 
carpets  grow  threadbare  but  are  not  replaced  :    the  fur- 
niture becomes   creaky  and   rickety :    the  garden  walks 
are  weedy :  the  bark  peels  off  the  rustic  verandah  :    the 
mosshouse  falls   much  over  to  one  side  :  the  friends,  far 
away,  grow  out  of  all  acquaintance.    The  parson  himself, 
once  so  precise   in  dress,  is    shabby    and    untidy   now  ; 
and  his  wife's  neat  figure  is  gone  :    the  servants  are  of 
inferior   class,  coarse  and   insolent :  perhaps  the  burden 
of   hopeless    debt    presses    always    with    its    dull,    dead 
weight  upon  the  poor  clergyman's  heart.     There  is  lit- 
tle spring  in  him  to    push  off    the  invasion   of  fatigue 
and    infection,   and    he    is    much  exposed  to   both  ;    and 
should  he  be   taken  away,  who  shall   care   for   the  widow 
and  the  fatherless,  losing  at  once  their  head,  their  home, 


CONCERNING   GROWING   OLD.  427 

their  means  of  living  ?  Even  you,  non-clerical  reader, 
know  precisely  what  I  describe  :  hundreds  have  seen  it : 
and  such  will  agree  with  me  when  I  say  that  there  is 
no  sadder  sight  than  that  of  a  clergyman,  with  a  wife 
and  children,  growing  poor  as  he  is  growing  old.  Oh, 
that  I  had  the  fortune  of  John  Jacob  Astor,  that  I  mi  "lit 
found,  once  for  all,  a  fund  that  should  raise  forever 
above  penury  and  degradation  the  widows  and  the 
orphans  of  rectory,  vicarage,  parsonage,  and  manse  ! 

And  even  when  the  old  man  has  none  depending  upon 
him  for  bread,  to  be  provided  from  his  lessening  store, 
there  is  something  inexpressibly  touching  and  mournful 
in  the  spectacle  of  an  old  man  who  must  pinch  and  screw. 
You  do  not  mind  a  bit  about  a  hopeful  young  lad  having 
to  live  in  humble  lodgings  up  three  pair  of  stairs ;  or 
about  such  a  one  having  a  limited  number  of  shirts, 
stockings,  and  boots,  and  needing  to  be  very  careful  and 
saving  as  to  his  clothes  ;  or  about  his  having  very  homely 
shaving-things,  or  hair-brushes  which  are  a  good  deal 
worn  out.  The  young  fellow  can  stand  all  that :  it  is  all 
quite  right :  let  him  bear  the  yoke  in  his  youth  :  he  may 
look  forward  to  better  days.  Nor  dues  there  seem  in 
the  nature  of  things  any  very  sad  inconsistency  in  the 
idea  of  a  young  lad  carefully  considering  how  long  his 
boots  or  great  coat  will  last,  or  with  what  minimum  of 
shirts  he  can  manage  to  get  on.  But  I  cannot  bear  the 
thought  of  a  gray-headed  old  man,  with  shaky  hand  and 
weary  limb,  sitting  down  in  his  lonely  lodging,  and 
meditating  on  such  things  as  these  :  counting  his  pocket- 
handkerchiefs,  and  suspecting  that  one  is  stolen ;  or 
looking  ruefully  at  a  boot  which  has  been  cut  where 
the  upper  leather  joins  the  sole.  Let  not  the  aged  man 
be  worried   with    such  petty    details  !      Of  course,   my 


428  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

reader,  I  know  as  well  as  you  do,  that  very  many  aged 
people  must  think  of  these  things  to  the  last.  All  I  say 
is,  that  if  I  had  the  ordering  of  things,  no  man  or 
woman  above  fifty  should  ever  know  the  want  of  money. 
And  whenever  I  find  a  four-leaved  shamrock,  that  is 
the  very  first  arrangement  I  shall  make.  Possibly  I 
may  extend  the  arrangement  further,  and  provide  that 
no  honest  married  man  or  woman  shall  ever  grow  early 
old  through  wearing  care.  What  a  little  end  is  some- 
times the  grand  object  of  a  human  being's  strivings 
through  many  weeks  and  months !  I  sat  down  the 
other  day  in  a  poor  chamber,  damp  with  much  linen 
drying  upon  crossing  lines.  There  dwells  a  solitary 
woman,  an  aged  and  infirm  woman,  who  supports  herself 
by  washing.  For  months  past  her  earnings  have  aver- 
aged three  shillings  a  week.  Out  of  that  sum  she  must 
provide  food  and  raiment ;  she  must  keep  in  her  poor 
fire,  and  she  must  pay  a  rent  of  nearly  three  pounds  a 
year.  '  It  is  hard  work,  sir,'  she  said  :  '  it  costs  me 
many  a  thought  getting  together  the  money  to  pay  my 
rent.'  And  I  could  see  well,  that  from  the  year's 
beginning  to  its  end,  the  thing  always  uppermost  in 
that  poor  old  widow's  waking  thoughts,  was  the  raising 
of  that  great  incubus  of  a  sum  of  money.  A  small 
end,  you  would  say,  for  the  chief  thoughts  of  an  im- 
mortal being !  Don't  you  feel,  gay  young  reader,  for 
that  fellow-creature,  to  whom  a  week  has  been  a  suc- 
cess, if  at  its  close  she  can  put  by  a  few  halfpence 
towards  meeting  the  term  day?  Would  you  not  like 
to  enrich  her,  to  give  her  a  light  heart,  by  sending  her 
a  half-sovereign  ?  If  you  would,  you  may  send  it 
to  me. 

It  is  well,  I  have  said,  for  a  man  who  is  growing  old, 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  429 

if  he  is  able  to  persuade  himself  that  though  physically 
going  downhill,  he  is  yet  in  some  respect  progressing. 
For  if  he  can  persuade  himself  that  he  is  progressing 
in  any  one  thing,  he  will  certainly  believe  that  he  is 
advancing  on  the  whole.  Still,  it  must  be  said,  that  the 
self-complacency  of  old  gentlemen  is  sometimes  amusing 
(where  not  irritating)  to  their  juniors.  The  self-conceit 
of  many  old  men  is  something  quite  amazing.  They 
talk  incessantly  about  themselves  and  their  doings  ;  and, 
to  hear  them  talk,  you  would  imagine  that  every  great 
social  or  political  change  of  late  years  had  been  brought 
about  mainly  by  their  instrumentality.  I  have  heard  an 
elderly  man  of  fair  average  ability,  declare  in  sober 
earnest,  that  had  he  gone  to  the  bar,  he  '  had  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying'  that  he  would  have  been  chancellor  or 
chief  justice  of  England.  I  have  witnessed  an  elderly 
man  whom  the  late  Sir  Robert  Peel  never  saw  or  heard 
of,  declare  that  Sir  Robert  had  borrowed  from  him  his 
idea  of  abolishing  the  Corn-laws.  I  have  heard  an 
elderly  mercantile  man,  who  had  gone  the  previous  day 
to  look  at  a  small  property  which  was  for  sale,  remark 
that  he  had  no  doubt  that  by  this  time  all  the  country 
was  aware  of  what  he  had  been  doing.  With  the  ma- 
jority of  elderly  men,  you  can  hardly  err  on  the  side  of 
over-estimating  the  amount  of  their  vanity.  They  will 
receive  with  satisfaction  a  degree  of  flattery  which  would 
at  once  lead  a  young  man  to  suspect  you  were  making 
a  fool  of  him.  There  is  no  doubt  that  if  a  man  be  fool- 
ish at  all,  he  always  grows  more  foolish  as  he  grows 
older.  The  most  outrageous  conceit  of  personal  beauty, 
intellectual  prowess,  weight  in  the  county,  superiority  in 
the  regard  of  horses,  wine,  pictures,  grapes,  potatoes, 
poultry,  pigs,  and  all  other  possessions,   which  I  have 


430  concerning  growing  old. 

ever  seen,  has  been  in  the  case  of  old  men.  And  I 
'nave  known  commonplace  old  women,  to  whom  if  you 
had  ascribed  queenly  beauty  and  the  intellect  of  Shak- 
speare,  they  would  have  thought  you  were  doing  them 
simple  justice.  The  truth  appears  to  be,  not  that  the 
vanity  of  elderly  folk  is  naturally  bigger  than  that  of 
their  juniors,  but  that  it  is  not  mown  down  in  that  un- 
sparing fashion  to  which  the  vanity  of  their  juniors  is 
subjected.  If  an  old  man  tells  you  that  the  abolition  of 
the  slave-trade  originated  in  his  back-parlor,  you  may 
think  him  a  vain,  silly  old  fellow,  but  you  do  not  tell 
him  so.  Whereas  if  a  young  person  makes  an  exhibi- 
tion of  personal  vanity,  he  is  severely  ridiculed.  He  is 
taught  sharply  that,  however  great  may  be  his  estimate 
of  himself,  it  will  not  do  to  show  it.  '  Shut  up,  old 
fellow,  and  don't  make  a  fool  of  yourself/  you  say  to  a 
friend  of  your  own  age,  should  he  begin  to  vapour.  But 
when  the  aged  pilgrim  begins  to  boast,  you  feel  bound 
to  listen  with  apparent  respect.  And  the  result  is,  that 
the  old  gentleman  fancies  you  believe  all  he  tells  you. 

Not  unfreipiently,  when  a  man  has  grown  old  to  that 
degree  that  all  his  powers  of  mind  and  body  are  con- 
siderably impaired,  there  is  a  curious  ami  touching  mood 
which  comes  before  an  almost  sudden  breaking-down 
into  decrepitude.  It  is  a  mood  in  which  the  man  be- 
comes convinced  that  he  is  not  so  very  old;  that  he  has 
bein  mistaken  in  fancying  that  the  autumn  of  life  was 
so  far  advanced  with  him;  and  that  all  he  has  to  do  in 
order  to  be  as  active  and  vigorous  as  he  ever  was,  is  to 
make  -ome  greal  change  of  scene  and  circumstances  : 
to  go  back,  perhaps,  to  some  place  where  he  had  lived 
many  years  before,  and  there,  as  Dr.  Johnson  expresses 
it,  to   'recover   youth  in   the  fields    where  he  once  was 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  431 

young.'  The  aged  clergyman  thinks  that  if  he  were 
now  to  go  to  the  parish  he  was  offered  forty  years  since, 
it  would  bring  back  those  days  again  :  he  would  be  the 
man  he  was  then.  Of  course,  in  most  cases,  such  a 
feeling  is  like  the  leaping  up  of  the  flame  before  it  goes 
out ;  it  is  an  impulse  as  natural  and  as  unreasonable  as 
that  which  makes  the  dying  man  insist  within  an  hour  of 
his  death  on  being  lifted  from  his  bed  and  placed  in  his 
easy-chair,  and  then  he  will  be  all  right.  But  some- 
times there  really  is  in  human  feeling  and  life  something 
analogous  to  the  Martinmas  summer  in  the  year.  Some- 
times after  we  had  made  up  our  mind  that  we  had 
grown  old,  it  flashes  upon  us  that  we  are  not  old  after 
all :  there  is  a  real  rejuvenescence.  Happy  days  pro- 
mote the  feeling.  You  know  that  as  autumn  draws  on, 
there  come  days  on  which  it  is  summer  or  winter  just 
as  the  weather  chances  to  be  fair  or  foul.  And  so  there 
is  a  stage  of  life  in  which  it  depends  mainly  on  a  man's 
surroundings  whether  he  shall  be  old  or  young.  If  un- 
successful, over-burdened,  over-driven,  lightly  esteemed, 
with  much  depending  upon  him,  and  little  aid  or  sym- 
pathy, a  man  may  feel  old  at  thirty-five.  But  if  there 
still  be  a  house  where  he  is  one  of  the  boys:  if  he  be 
living  among  his  kindred  and  those  who  have  grown  up 
along  with  him  :  if  he  be  still  unmarried  :  if  he  have 
not  lived  in  many  different  places,  or  in  any  place 
very  far  away :  if  he  have  not  known  many  different 
modes  of  life,  or  worked  in  many  kinds  of  work : 
then  at  thirty-five  he  may  feel  very  young.  There 
are  men  who  at  that  age  have  never  known  what 
it  is  to  stand  upon  their  own  legs  in  life,  and  to  act 
upon  their  own  responsibility.  They  have  always  had 
some  one  to  tell    them    what  to    do.       I    can    imagine 


432  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

that  towards  the  close  of  the  ten  years  which  Pisis- 
t  rat  us  Caxton  spent  in  Australia,  far  away  from  his 
parents  and  his  home,  and  day  by  day  obliged  to  decide 
and  to  manage  for  himself,  he  had  begun  to  feel  toler- 
ably old.  But  when  he  came  back  again,  and  found  his 
father  and  mother  hardly  changed  in  aspect ;  and  found 
the  chairs,  and  sofas,  and  beds,  and  possibly  even  the 
carpets,  looking  much  as  he  had  left  them ;  those  ten 
years,  a  vast  expanse  while  they  were  passing  over, 
would  close  up  into  something  very  small  in  the  per- 
spective ;  and  he  would  feel  with  a  sudden  exultation 
that  he  was  quite  a  young  fellow  yet. 

It  is  wonderful  what  a  vast  amount  of  work  a  man 
may  go  through  without  its  telling  much  upon  him : 
and  how  many  years  he  may  live  without  feeling  per- 
ceptibly older  at  their  close.  The  years  were  long  in 
passing ;  they  look  like  nothing  when  past.  If  you 
were  to  go  away,  my  friend,  from  London  or  Edinburgh, 
and  live  for  five  or  six  years  in  the  centre  of  the  Libyan 
desert ;  or  in  an  island  of  the  South  Seas ;  or  at  an 
up-country  station  in  India ;  there  would  be  many  even- 
ings in  those  years  on  which  you  would  feel  as  though 
you  were  separated  by  ages  from  the  scenes  and  friends 
you  knew.  It  would  seem  like  a  century  since  you 
came  away  ;  it  would  seem  like  an  impossibility  that 
you  should  ever  be  back  again  in  the  old  place,  looking 
and  feeling  much  in  the  old  way.  But  at  length  travel- 
ling on  week  after  week,  you  come  home  again.  You 
find  your  old  companions  looking  just  as  before,  and  the 
places  you  knew  are  little  changed.  Miss  Smith  a 
blooming  young  woman  before  you  went  out,  is  a  bloom- 
ing young  woman  still,  and  probably  singing  the  same 
songs  which  you  remember  her  singing   then.     Why,  it 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  433 

rushes  upon  you,  you  have  been  a  very  short  time 
away  ;  you  are  not  a  day  older ;  it  is  a  mere  nothing  to 
go  out  sperm-whaling  for  four  or  five  years,  or  to  retire 
for  that  period  to  a  parish  in  the  Ultima  Thule.  Life, 
after  all,  is  so  long,  that  you  may  cut  a  good  large  slice 
out  of  the  earlier  years  of  it  without  making  it  percepti- 
bly less.  When  Macaulay  returned  from  India  after 
his  years  there,  I  have  no  doubt  he  felt  this.  And  the 
general  principle  is  true,  that  almost  any  outward  condi- 
tion or  any  state  of  feeling,  after  it  has  passed  away, 
appears  to  us  to  have  lasted  a  very  much  shorter  time 
than  it  did  when  it  was  passing  ;  and  it  leaves  us  with 
the  conviction  that  we  are  not  nearly  so  old  as  we  had 
fancied  while  it  was  passing.  And  the  rejuvenescence 
is  sometimes  not  merely  in  feeling,  but  in  fact  and  in 
appearance.  Have  you  not  known  a  lady  of  perhaps 
three  and  thirty  years  married  to  an  ugly  old  fogy  of 
eighty-five,  who,  during  the  old  fogy's  life  wore  high 
dresses,  and  caps,  that  she  might  appear  something  like 
a  suitable  match  for  the  old  fogy ;  but  who  instantly  the 
ancient  buffalo  departed  this  life,  cast  aside  her  ven- 
erable trappings,  and  burst  upon  the  world  almost  as  a 
blooming  girl,  doubtless  to  her  own  astonishment  no  less 
than  to  that  of  her  friends  ?  And  you  remember  that 
pleasing  touch  of  nature  in  the  new  series  of  Friends  in 
Council,  when  Milverton,  after  having  talked  of  himself 
as  a  faded  widower,  and  appeared  before  us  as  one  de- 
voted to  grave  philosophic  research,  falls  in  love  with  a 
girl  of  two-and-twenty,  and  discovers  that  after  all  he  is 
not  so  old.  And  I  suppose  it  would  be  a  pleasant  dis- 
covery to  any  man,  after  he  had  fancied  for  years  that 
the  romantic  interest  had  for  him  fled  from  life,  to  find 
that  music    could   still    thrill    through   him   as  of   yore, 

28 


434  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

and  that  the  capacity  of  spooniness  was  not  at  all  oblit- 
erated.    As  Festus  says, 

'  Rouse  thee,  heart! 
Bow  of  my  life,  thou  yet  art  full  of  spring ! 
My  quiver  still  hath  many  purposes.' 

"When    Sir    Philip    Sidney  tells    us  that    in  walking 
through  the    fields   of  his   Arcadia,   you  would,  among 
other  pleasant  sights  and  sounds,  here  and  there  chance 
upon  a  shepherd  boy,  '  piping  as  if  he  would  never  grow 
old,'  you  find  the  chivalrous  knight   giving  his  counte- 
nance to  the    vulgar    impression    that   youth  is  a  finer 
thing  than  age.     And  you  may  find  among  the  Twice- 
told  Tales  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  a  most  exquisite  one 
called   The  Fountain  of  Youth,  in  which  we  are  told  of 
three  old  gentlemen  and  an  old  lady,  who  were  so   en- 
chanted by  tasting  a  draught  which   brought   back  the 
exhilaration   of  youth  for   half  an  hour,   (though   it  led 
them  likewise  to  make  very  great  fools  of  themselves,) 
that  they  determined  they  would  wander  over  the  world 
till  they  should  find  that   wondrous  fountain,  and  then 
quaff  its  waters  morning,  noon,  and  night.     And  Thomas 
Moore,  in  one  of  his  sweetest  songs,  warms  for  a  minute 
from    cold    glitter    into  earnestness,   as  he  declares    his 
belief  that  no  gains   which  advancing  years  can  bring 
with   them  are  any  compensation   for  the  light-hearted? 
ness  and   the    passionate    excitement    which    they    take 
away.     He  says, — 

'  Ne'er  tell  me  of  glories  serenely  adorning 

The  close  of  our  day,  the  calm  eve  of  our  night: 
Give  me  back,  give  me  back  the  wild  freshness  of  morning,— 
Its  smiles  and  its  tears  arc  worth  evening's  best  light.' 

And   indeed    it  is  to  be  admitted  that   in  a  life  whose 
poetry  is  drawn  from  the  domain  of  passion  and  imag- 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  435 

ination,  the  poetry  does  pass   away  as  imagination  fla"-s 
and  the   capacity  of  emotion   dries  up  with   advancing 
time.     But  the  true  philosopher  among  the  three  writers 
who  have  been  mentioned,  is  Mr.  Hawthorne.     He  shows 
us  how  the  exhilaration,  the  wild  freshness  of  the  season 
when  life  is   at   blood-heat,    partakes  of  the  nature  of 
intoxication ;  and  he  leaves  us  with  the  sober  conviction 
that  the  truly  wise  man  may  well  be  thankful  when  he 
has  got  safely  through  that  feverish  season  of  temptation 
and  of  folly.    Let  us  be  glad  if  our  bark  has  come  (even 
a  little  battered)    through  the   Maelstrom,  by  the  Scylla 
and  Charybdis,  and  is  now  sailing  quietly  upon  a  calm 
and  tranquil  sea.     Wait  till  you  are  a  little  older,  youth- 
ful   reader,   and    you    will    understand    that    truth    and 
soberness   (how  fitly  linked  together)   are  noble  things. 
If  you  are  a  good  man  —  let  me  say  it  at  once,  a  Chris- 
tian man  —  your  latter  days  are  better  a  thousand  times 
than  those  early  ones  after  which  superficial  and  worldly 
folk    whimper.     The    capacity   of   excitement    is    much 
lessened;  the  freshness  of  feeling  and  heart  are  much 
gone ;    though  not,  of   necessity,    so   very  much.     You 
begin,  like  the  old  grandmother  in   that  exquisite  poem 
of  Mr.  Tennyson,  'to  be   a  little  weary;'  the  mornino- 
air  is  hardly  so  exhilarating,  nor  the  frosty  winter  after- 
noon ;  the  snowdrops  and  primroses  come  back,  and  you 
are   disappointed   that  so  little  of  the  vernal  joy  comes 
with  them  ;  you  go  and  stand  by  the  grave  of  your  young 
sister  on  the  anniversary  of  the    day  when  she  died,  and 
you  wonder  that  you   have  come  to  feel  so  little  where 
once  you  felt  so  much.     You  preach  the  sermons  you  once 
preached  with   emotion  so  deep  that  it  was  contagious ; 
but  now  the  corresponding  feeling  does  not  come ;   you 
give    them  coldly ;   you   are   mortified    at   the    contrast 


436  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

between  the  warmth  there  is  in  the  old  words,  and  the 
chilliness  with  which  you  speak  them.  You  hear  of  the 
death  of  a  dear  friend,  and  you  are  vexed  that  you  can 
take  it  so  coolly.  But,  O  my  brother,  aging  like  myself, 
do  you  not  know,  in  sober  earnest,  that  for  such  losses 
as  these,  other  things  have  brought  abundant  recom- 
pense ?  What  a  meaning  there  is  now  to  you  in  the 
words  of  St.  Austin — 'Thou  madst  us  for  Thyself,  and 
our  hearts  are  restless  till  they  find  rest  in  Thee ! ' 
You  are  beginning  to  understand  that  St.  Paul  was  right, 
when  (even  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  inexperienced 
youth  is  proverbially  the  most  hopeful)  he  declared  that 
in  the  truest  sense  'experience  waketh  hope.'  What  a 
calm  there  is  here !  Passion  is  no  longer  the  disturb- 
ing force  it  once  was.  Your  eyes  are  no  longer  blinded 
to  the  truth  of  things  by  the  glittering  mists  of  fancy. 
You  do  your  duty  quietly  and  hopefully.  You  can  bear 
patiently  with  the  follies  and  the  expectations  of  youth. 
I  say  it  with  the  firmest  assurance  of  the  truth  of  what  I 
say,  that  as  he  grows  old,  the  wise  man  has  great  reason 
to  thank  God  that  he  is  no  longer  young.  Truth  and 
soberness  are  well  worth  all  they  cost.  You  wont  make 
a  terrific  fool  of  yourself  any  more.  Campbell  was  not 
a  philosopher,  and  possibly  he  was  only  half  in  earnest 
when  he  wrote  the  following  verse  ;  but  many  men,  no 
longer  young,  will  know  how  true  it  is  :  — 

•  Hail,  welcome  tide  of  life,  where  no  tumultuous  billow*  roll, 
How  wondrous  to  myself  appears  this  halcyon  calm  of  soul! 
The  wearied  bird  blown  o'er  the  deep  would  sooner  quit  its  shore, 
Than  I  would  cross  the  gulf  again  that  Time  has  brought  me  o'er!' 

The  dead  are  the  only  people  that  never  grow  old.  There 
was  something  typical  in  the  arrestment  of  time  in  the  case 
of  the  youthful  miner,  of  whom  we  have  already  spoken. 


CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD.  437 

Your  little  brother  or  sister  that  died  long  ago  remains  in 
death  and  in  l-emembrance  the  same  young  thing  forever. 
It  is  fourteen  years  this  evening  since  the  writer's  sister 
left  this  world.  She  was  fifteen  years  old  then  —  she  is 
fifteen  years  old  yet.  I  have  grown  older  since  then  by 
fourteen  years,  but  she  has  never  changed  as  they  ad- 
vanced ;  and  if  God  spares  me  to  fourscore,  I  never  shall 
think  of  her  as  other  than  the  youthful  creature  she  faded. 
The  other  day  I  listened  as  a  poor  woman  told  of  the 
death  of  her  first-born  child.  He  was  two  years  old. 
She  had  a  small  washing-green,  across  which  was 
stretched  a  rope  that  came  in  the  middle  close  to  the 
ground.  The  boy  was  leaning  on  the  rope,  swinging 
backwards  and  forwards,  and  shouting  with  delight. 
The  mother  went  into  her  cottage  and  lost  sight  of  him 
for  a  minute  ;  and  when  she  returned  the  little  man  was  ly- 
ing across  the  rope,  dead.  It  had  got  under  his  chin  :  he 
had  not  sense  to  push  it  away  ;  and  he  was  suffocated. 
The  mother  told  me,  and  I  believe  truly,  that  she  had 
never  been  the  same  person  since ;  but  the  thing  which 
mainly  struck  me  was,  that  though  it  is  eighteen  years 
since  then,  she  thought  of  her  child  as  an  infant  of  two 
years  yet :  it  is  a  little  child  she  looks  for  to  meet  her  at 
the  gate  of  the  Golden  City.  Had  her  child  lived  he 
would  have  been  twenty  years  old  now ;  he  died,  and  he 
is  only  two :  he  is  two  yet :  he  will  never  be  more  than 
two.  The  little  rosy  face  of  that  morning,  and  the  little 
half-articulate  voice,  would  have  been  faintly  remem- 
bered by  the  mother  had  they  gradually  died  into  boy- 
hood and  manhood :  but  that  day  stereotyped  them :  they 
remain  unchanged. 

Have  you  seen,  my  reader,  the  face  that  had  grown 
old  in  life  grow  young  after  death?   the  expression  of 
•js  ' 


438  CONCERNING  GROWING  OLD. 

many  years  since,  lost  for  long,  come  out  startlingly  in 
the  features,  fixed  and  cold  ?  Every  one  has  seen  it : 
and  it  is  sometimes  strange  how  rapidly  the  change  takes 
place.  The  marks  of  pain  fade  out,  and  with  them  the 
marks  of  age.  I  once  saw  an  aged  lady  die.  She  had 
borne  sharp  pain  for  many  days  with  the  endm-ance  of  a 
martyr ;  she  had  to  bear  sharp  pain  to  the  very  last. 
The  features  were  tense  and  rigid  with  suffering ;  they 
remained  so  while  life  remained.  It  was  a  beautiful  si<rht 
to  see  the  change  that  took  place  in  the  very  instant  of 
dissolution.  The  features,  sharp  for  many  clays  with  pain, 
in  that  instant  recovered  the  old  aspect  of  quietude  which 
they  had  borne  in  health  :  the  tense,  tight  look  was  gone, 
you  saw  the  signs  of  pain  go  out.  You  felt  that  all  suf- 
fering was  over.  It  was  no  more  of  course  than  the 
working  of  physical  law :  but  in  that  case  it  seemed  as  if 
there  were  a  further  meaning  conveyed.  And  so  it 
seems  to  me  when  the  young  look  comes  back  on  the 
departed  Christian's  face.  Gone,  it  seems  to  say,  where 
the  progress  of  time  shall  no  longer  bring  age  or  decay. 
Gone  where  there  are  beings  whose  life  may  be  reckoned 
by  centuries,  but  in  whom  life  is  fresh  and  young,  and  al- 
ways will  be  so.  Close  the  aged  eyes  !  Fold  the  aged 
hands  in  rest.     Their  owner  is  no  longer  old  ! 


CONCLUSION. 


j|?§)l  ND  such,  my  friendly  reader,  are  my  Rec- 
reations.     It  was    pleasant  to  me,  amid 
much   work    of  a    very    different    kind,   to 
write  these  Essays.     I  trust  that  it  has  not 
been  very  tiresome  for  you  to  read  them. 

There  is  a  peculiar  happiness  which  is  known  to  the 
essayist.  There  is  a  virtue  about  his  work  to  draw  the 
sting  from  the  little  worries  of  life.  If  you  fairly  look  some 
petty  vexation  of  humanity  in  the  face,  and  write  an  ac- 
count of  it,  it  will  never  annoy  you  so  much  any  more.  It 
recurs  :  and  it  annoys  you  :  but  you  have  a  latent  feeling 
of  satisfaction  at  finding  how  exactly  accurate  was  your 
description  of  it ;  how  completely  your  present  sensation 
runs  into  the  mould  you  had  made.  It  is  a  curious  thing, 
too,  that  there  is  a  certain  pleasure  in  writing  about  a 
thing  which  was  very  unpleasant  when  it  happened  to  one. 
You  know  how  an  artist  makes  a  pleasing  picture  out 
of  a  poor  cottage,  in  which  it  would  be  very  disagreeable 
to  live.  You  know  how  a  great  painter  makes  a  picture, 
which  you  often  like  to  look  at,  of  an  event  at  which  you 
would  not  have  liked  to  have  been  present.  You  pause  for 
a  long  time  before  the  representation  of  some  boors  drink- 
ing ;  or  of  a  furious  struggle  in  a  guard-room  ;  or  of  a 
murdered  man  lying  dead.    Now,  in  fact,  you  would  have 


440  CONCLUSION. 

got  out  of  the  way  of  such  sights :  the  first  two  would 
have  been  disgusting  :  the  last,  at  least  a  '  sorry  sight.' 

It  is  not  quite  a  case  in  point,  that  we  look  with  great 
interest  and  pleasure  at  the  representation  of  a  sight 
which  it  would  have  been  no  worse  than  sad  to  see. 
Such  a  sight  may  have  been  elevating  as  well  as  sadden- 
ing. I  see  a  figure  laid  upon  a  bed  :  you  know  it  is  stiff 
and  cold.  It  is  a  female  figure  :  there  is  the  fixed  but 
beautiful  face.  And  through  the  open  window  I  see  in 
the  west  the  summer  sunset  blazing,  and  the  golden  light 
falling  upon  the  pale  features,  and  the  closed  eyes  which 
will  never  open  more  till  the  sun  has  ceased  to  shine.  I  do 
not  wonder  that  the  exquisite  genius  of  the  painter  fixed 
on  such  a  scene,  and  preserved  it  with  rigid  accuracy,  and 
wrote  beneath  his  picture  such  words  as  these: 

The  sun  shall  no  more  be  thy  light  by  day;  neither  for  brightness 
shall  the  moon  give  light  unto  thee:  but  the  Lord  shall  be  unto  thee 
an  everlasting  light,  and  thy  God  thy  glory. 

Thy  sun  shall  no  more  go  down;  neither  shall  thy  moon  withdraw 
ilf;  for  the  Lord  shall  be  thine  everlasting  light,  and  the  days  of 
thy  mourning  shall  be  ended. 

But  there  is  in  this  one  respect  an  entire  analogy  be- 
tween the  feeling  of  the  artist  and  the  feeling  of  the  essay- 
ist :  that  to  both,  this  world  is  to  a  certain  extent  trans- 
figured by  the  fact,  that  to  each,  things  become  compara- 
tively pleasing  if  they  would  please  when  described  or 
depicted,  though  they  might  be  unpleasing  in  fact.  Not 
merely  are  those  things  good  which  are  good  in  them- 
selves :  those  things  are  good  which,  though  bad,  will 
please  ami  interest  when  represented.  It  is  extremely 
certain,  that  there  is  a  pleasure  in  writing  about  what 
there  is  no  pleasure  in  bearing:  and  here  is  a  happiness 
of  the  essayist.      You   are  grossly  cheated,  my  friend,  by 


CONCLUSION.  441 

a  man  of  most  respectable  character.  You  are  worried 
by  some  glaring  instance  of  that  horrible  dilatoriness,  un 
faithfulness,  and  stupidity,  which  come  across  the  success- 
ful issue  of  almost  all  human  affairs.  You  are  vexed,  in 
short,  at  seeing  how  creakingly  and  jarringly  and  uneasi- 
ly the  machine  of  life  and  society  manages  to  blunder  on. 
"Well,  you  suffer ;  and  you  have  no  relief.  But  the  es- 
sayist's painful  feeling  at  such  things  is  much  mitigated 
when  he  thinks  that  here  is  a  subject  for  him ;  and  when 
he  goes  and  describes  it.  Once,  it  was  to  me  unre- 
lieved and  unalloyed  pain  to  be  cheated  :  or  to  listen  to  the 
vapouring  of  some  silly  person.  Now,  though  still  I  can- 
not say  I  like  it,  still  I  dislike  it  less.  I  make  a  mental 
note.  It  will  all  go  into  an  essay.  One  gets  something 
of  the  spirit  of  the  morbid  anatomist,  to  whom  some 
peculiar  phase  of  disease  is  infinitely  more  interesting 
than  commonplace  health.  Interesting  wrong  becomes 
(must  I  confess  it  ?)  a  finer  sight  than  uninteresting 
right.  You  know  how  country  servants  rejoice  in 
coming  to  tell  you  that  something  is  amiss :  that  a 
horse  is  lame,  or  a  pig  dying,  or  a  field  of  potatoes 
blighted.  It  is  something  to  tell  about.  Perhaps  the 
essayist  knows  the  peculiar  emotion. 

I  sometimes  have  thought  that  the  writer  of  fiction  is  to 
be  envied.  He  has  another  life  and  world  than  that  we 
see.  He  has  a  duality  of  being.  He  sits  down  to  his 
desk ;  and  in  a  little  he  is  far  away,  and  away  in  a 
world  where  he  is  absolute  monarch.  It  has  not  been  so 
with  me.  In  writing  these  essays,  I  have  not  been  rapt 
away  into  heroic  times  and  distant  scenes,  and  into 
romantic  tracts  of  feeling.  I  have  been  writing  amid 
daily  work  and  worry,  of  daily  work  and  worry ;  and 
of  the    little  things  by  which    daily    work    and    worry 


442  CONCLUSION. 

are  intensified  or  relieved.  I  cannot  pi'etend  to  long  ex- 
perience of  life  ;  nor  perhaps  to  much.  But  from  a 
quiet  and  lonely  life,  little  varied  and  very  happy,  I 
have  sent  out  these  essays  month  by  month ;  and  I  hope 
to  send  out  more. 


THE    END. 


CAMHKIDGE:   l'KINTED   BY   IT.   O.   HOUGBTOK. 


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6         A  Lift  of  Books  Publifhed 
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8 


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u         u 

75  cents 

U                      U 

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75  cents 

«        (i 

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io       A  Lift  of  Books  Publifhed 
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by   TlCKNOR    AND    FlELDS.  11 

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12       A  Lift  of  Books  Publifhed 


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by   TlCKNOR    AND    FlELDS.  13 

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14       A  Lift  of  Books  Publifhed 

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16       A  Lift  of  Books  Publifhed. 

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CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 

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